♦ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, t 






! UNITED .STATKS OF AMERICA.! 



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Rocks and Shoals. 

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^Lectures to goting JEm, 






BY 



GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 



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BOSTON: 

AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION. 
1870. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

THE AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCIATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
District of Massachusetts. 



CAMBRIDGE t 
PRESS OP JOHN WILSON AND SON. 






I DEDICATE 
THIS LITTLE BOOK, 

YOUNG MAN, 



PREFACE. 



'TT^HESE Lectures were delivered without notes, 
and have all the faults which belong to ex- 
tempore speech. They make no pretensions what- 
ever to any merit of diction or style ; and I hope my 
critics will weigh my Book, not in the scale of Rhetoric 
or Logic, but rather in that scale which decides the 
value of its advice and admonitions. I have spoken 
out of my great love for and my sympathy with 
young men ; and if I have said any thing to stir a 
single soul to a good resolution, I am amply repaid. 
Let me tell a story. A young man of great 
promise was sitting directly in front of me during 
the delivery of the first Lecture, on Snares. As 
I described the progress of a soul on the wrong 
track, I noticed that he grew very uneasy. When 
I pictured the inevitable results of extravagance and 
gambling, he covered his face for a moment ; and 
then, flushed with the consciousness of guilt, rose 



VI PREFACE. 

and left the church, muttering, " Too late ! too 
late ! " It was too late. He had already reached 
the end of his tether, and in a few days was arrested 
on a grave charge. 

If I can only save others from his sad fate, it will 
be an immeasurably great reward for my labors. 
God grant it may be so. 

6* H* H* 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Snares 3 

II. !N^OT Luck, but Haud Work .... 37 

III. Honesty . 63 

TV, How TO GET Money 89 

V. Hurry and Worry 115 

VI. Undefiled Religion 141 



SNARES. 



LECTURES. 



I. 

SNARES. 



Job xviii. 10 : " The snare is laid for him in the ground, and a 
trap for him in the way." 

'TPHERE is no change in a man's life which, 
in importance, equals that which occurs 
when he first leaves his home to enter the 
world and seek his fortune. In his own vil- 
lage, he is the centre of an admiring circle of 
friends. His father has lovingly and proudly- 
prophesied great things concerning him ; his 
mother feels that his nature is refined and 
pure and true, as most men's are not; his 
sisters worship him as a kind of god; his 
word is law, and his life has a positive and 
constant influence. 



4 SNAEES. 

When he sets foot within the magic circle 
of such a city as this, every thing is changed. 
The curtain falls upon the past as upon an 
illusion, and rises upon a future that is hard, 
cold, cheerless, and discouraging. 

Without money, but with a great hope, he 
enters the world, aiming to lift himself a little 
higher with every day's passage, and believ- 
ing that at last he will make for himself a no- 
ble and an enviable position. 

But a poor man cannot live in a palace, 
though he be hopeful and ambitious ; and so 
he is compelled by his slender means to choose 
a single, dreary, sunless, cheerless room, close 
to the roof of some tall building, where he can 
hear the patter of the rain overhead. 

He lies awake at night wondering what 
they are doing far away who love him, and is 
overwhelmed by loneliness, and a conscious- 
ness of the depressing fact, that in the great 
city no one cares whether he lives or dies. 

He enters the crowd which hustles him to 
the right and to the left, and his first impres- 



SNARES, 5 

sion of city life is, that every man takes care 
of himself, no matter what it costs ; that he 
must regard his own interests only, and pro- 
tect them at all hazards. He has no friend- 
ships to cheer him ; he knows no one in this 
great seething world ; no one knows him ; no 
one cares for him ; and he is made to feel that 
the only rule of life is either to keep up with 
the crowd in its rapid movements, or else to 
get out of the way and make room for some 
one else. 

It is verily a hard world that he has entered. 
It is a world that gives as little as it can, and 
asks as much as it dares ; a world that moves 
so rapidly that he, poor boy, grows dizzy ; it 
cares so little for the dead even, that the hearse, 
with the funeral carriages attached, trots 
through the street instead of walking, that it 
may deposit its freight in the graveyard with 
all possible expedition, and hurry back again 
to the next house of mourning by which it has 
been engaged. 

Men care nothing for the dead : it is life 



6 SNAEES. 

they want, and the more daring it is the 
better. 

Well, friends, as I have said, this young 
man steps upon the threshold of his new ca- 
reer with boundless hopes in his heart. He 
has made for himself a very beautiful dream ; 
he has colored it with all colors that are grand 
and exciting. He believes that he has an in- 
finitude of power. He believes that he is able 
to achieve almost any thing, and that as sure 
as the years go by they will witness his prog- 
ress towards his ideal, and bear witness to his 
sturdy courage, and his bold and persistent 
endeavor. 

How many hopes of this kind have been 
wrecked! Look forward into the twenty 
years that are before us, and who can tell 
what is hidden in their mysteries ? Unless a 
man have great strength within himself, unless 
he is fortified with a mother's love, unless his 
father's prayers have been answered, and the 
blessing of Heaven has come down and shaped 
itself into religious principles in his soul, the 



SNAEES, 7 

chances are clearly against him, and it may 
be there is ruin, sorrow, and trouble in those 
years. 

How sad to look upon that side of the pic- 
ture ! I would not do it willingly ; and yet 
you know as well as I, — you who are grow- 
ing gray-headed know it, — that many young 
men drop out of existence in the first few 
years, after starting with a great boundless 
hope. They fall because they are too greatly 
tempted. They are caught in the fowler's 
snare. They are trapped into ruin and 
death. 

A few years ago, I stood on the south shore 
of the island of Nantucket. A terrible gale 
had been blowing the day before, and in the 
night a heavy fog had settled down upon the 
broad waste. A vessel richly freighted had 
come bounding along, leaping from wave 
to wave. Those on board thought they 
were in the right path ; they all expected in 
a few days to grasp the hands of friends ; they 
all believed that ere the setting of another sun. 



8 8NARES. 

perhaps, they could shade their eyes with 
their hands, and see the blessed land that was 
opening its arms with a warm welcome for 
them. But in an evil hour she struck the 
beach. Her masts went overboard ; she was 
a total wreck. As I stood looking at the brave 
vessel, helpless, dismantled, torn, one moment 
lifted in the arms of the giant and remorse- 
less waves, and the next dashed upon the 
sand with ruthless omnipotence until every 
timber shivered and shrieked in agony, it 
seemed to me so sad a picture that I could 
have wept bitter tears of regret. The master- 
piece of man's ingenuity in a single night 
ruined and lost. 

Brothers, I have stood upon the shore of 
this lifetime of ours, and seen a sadder picture 
than that. I have seen a young man freighted 
with all rich hope, laden down to the very 
water's edge with an ambition whose possi- 
bilities might lift him up on their angelic pin- 
ions to the very pinnacle of fame and of 
fortune; I have seen him struggling in the 



SNARES. g 

midst of the immorality and infidelity which 
brood everywhere in such a city as this. 

I have seen him strike the rocks ; and in a mo- 
ment, as it were, dismantled, agonized, shriek- 
ing at the impending ruin. I have heard him 
pour out his regrets, and pour them out in 
vain. 

There is no picture so gloomy as that in 
the foreground of which is a lost soul crying 
to God for help, and looking back with tears 
of remorse upon the bitter and agonizing past. 
That past cannot be recalled. Would to 
Heaven that the soul could go back twenty 
years and live life all over again! But the 
law is inexorable. The life has been lived. 
The years will not come at our bidding ; they 
have gone into the terrible past ; they bear in 
their bosom the testimony which we have 
given into their keeping. When the last day 
comes, they will stand before the bar of God 
and tell the story of that sinfulness, of that 
sorrow, and of that crime. 

Well, the first thing to fight against, — for it 
1* 



lO SNABES. 

is my business to-night to point out some of 
the dangerous rocks against which men have 
been wrecked, — is that natural desire which 
every young man has to do what is called 
Seeing what life is made of. The term "Young 
America " represents a great deal of knowl- 
edge that had better not be known. When 
we attempt to see what life is made of, we 
mean that we will dive into the darkness, that 
we will taste forbidden fruits, that we will fol- 
low the lead of our curiosity, and in doing so 
we run a fearful risk. 

When I was a boy, the maps of Africa 
had written upon them in the centre. Un- 
explored Territory. In the life of every good 
man, it seems to me, those words have a place. 
There is a whole realm of knowledge which 
your feet should never press. Within this 
magic circle, there is only doubt, despair, 
trials, uncertainty, disease. There are some 
things which it were better not to know, and 
there are many things which it were far better 
not to do. There are some words which 



SNARES. li 

never should pass the lips, and there are some 
thoughts which, when they chase each other 
through the mind, are not like the clouds be- 
tween the sun and the inland lake, that leave 
no shadow when they have passed, but rather 
like the fatal miasm which, when it has gone, 
leaves ghosts of itself to haunt the ground 
where it has been. 

Now, then, brothers, there are a great many 
temptations which stand in the way of this 
pure-hearted boy of whom I have spoken. He 
comes to this great city to seek his fortune, 
and by honest means ; but, unfortunate though 
it is, there are many men in the community 
whose business it is to speculate in souls, and 
who make their living out of the sadness and 
woe they bring upon the young and untried. 
I warn you not only against those who put 
their hands in your pocket, and steal your 
purse, not only against those who by stealth 
and under cover of the darkness watch your 
house, to break through and rob you of all 
your worldly possessions, but also, and most 



12 SNAEES. 

emphatically, against those human spiders who 
spend their utmost ingenuity — and it is some- 
times a damning, and always a damnable in- 
genuity — to win your confidence, and then 
lead you into the web. They trade in human 
wrecks. They lay snares for the young, and 
remorselessly drag them down to perdition, 
willing, for their own base purposes, to kill the 
body and curse the soul. You can see these 
fiends at every street-corner after dark. They 
are to be found on the steps of fashionable 
hotels. They are well dressed, and seemingly 
well mannered. They put on the sacred dis- 
guise of friendship ; and, under pretence of 
showing you what life is made of. they draw 
you to the edge of the pit, and then tumble 
you in. They introduce you to the gilded 
palaces where he who enters leaves hope be- 
hind. If he treads over the threshold, his 
mother's prayers are turned to weeping. To 
predict the future is not impossible; for he 
who takes the first step in the downward path 
is likely to gain impulse as he goes, and bring 



SNABES. 13 

up at last in the grave. Yes : I use no meta- 
phor when I say that there are spiders' webs 
which men and women are weaving in your 
streets, and, like poor little flies in the sun- 
shine, you buzz your way from flower to flow- 
er, and then all at once are caught in the 
meshes. Unless you are strong in yourself, 
mighty of limb and mighty of purpose ; unless 
you are borne upon the eagle pinions of 
prayer, and trust in God, you will be so en- 
tangled and so snarled in soul, that the end 
can be easily foretold. 

Beware of pitfalls in the streets everywhere, 
on either side of which stands the woman 
with the pretty face, or the man with a hand- 
ful of golden coins. She beckons you with 
her smile, and you do not see where your feet 
are treading: he offers you sudden wealth, 
and lifts the gold so high that when your eyes 
look at it you do not see the great pit that is 
beneath you. You walk in safety for a little 
while ; but at last you take the fatal step, and 
down you go ! And who cares ? Not she 



H 



SNARES. 



who lured you to death: she looks at you 
when your money is gone, and smiles in de- 
rision because you were such a fool. He does 
not care for you. Though he has laughed 
with you, and though he has been friendly 
with you, he does not care an atom for you. 
It is only for what he can get out of you that 
he makes his professions, and when you have 
fallen, and he has got your last dollar, the 
only thing you get from him is a kick into 
your grave ; for he is too busy looking out for 
another victim to lend a helping hand to get 
you out of trouble. 

That is the way of temptations. Every 
thing is wide open that is bad, and every thing 
seems to be shut that is good. 

I wonder, friends, more and more, that our 
Protestant religion is so lacking in worldly 
wisdom in its attempt to gain influence over 
young lives. This church is shut from nine 
o'clock Sunday evening till nine o'clock on 
Sunday morning of the next week. There is 
hardly a Protestant Church in this country that 



SNARES. 15 

is open on week-days, while hell opens its 
jaws at every street-corner; and while devils, 
in all sorts of costume and in every possible 
shape, are holding young men in their grasp^ 
and luring them to their own ruin, the insti- 
tutions of salvation — the institutions that are 
remedial and redemptive — are to be counted 
on your fingers, and this in a land that boasts of 
the century that smiles upon it, that is proud 
of its culture, of its civilization, of its charities, 
of its religion. Why i^s it ? Why is it that so 
few good influences are brought to bear upon 
those who need the most; so few words of 
advice given to those who, if they were given, 
might be led to the right, instead of wander- 
ing to the left ? I would to God that every 
church in our land could be open all the time ; 
that every evening our own organ could send 
forth its sweet music ; that the door of this 
church might be wide open, that the spacious 
hall might be lighted up, and that ten thou- 
sand fascinations might be offered to draw 
you here, instead of allowing you to loiter 



1 6 SJSTARES, 

along the sidewalk looking for excitement, 
and forgetful of all things else. 

Now, then, you ask me to be more definite ; 
you say, Tell us what are the temptations 
that beset a young man. I need not tell you, 
for you already know ; and yet I do need to 
tell you, because, after I have told you, I want 
to show you how to rid yourselves of them. 

I suppose the first snare of the young man 
comes from the habit which he almost always 
forms of drinking. Drunkenness is an old 
subject, and yet the procession of the lost is 
very long. It is a very trite theme, and yet 
the groans of victims are ever coming to our 
ears. While we walk in safety, those who 
reel cry out for help ; and fathers and mothers 
in heaven look down with pity, while God 
himself grieves for his wilful and wandering 
children. 

How many young men during the first 
three years of their career in such a city as 
this, led by one and another influence, by the 
love of excitement, by pretence of friendships 



SNARES. 17 

that seem to be simply convivial ; how many 
young men in the first three years of their 
career have dropped out of existence, and 
been forgotten, — their futures buried in the 
darkness ! I am told a great many business 
men lure their customers by the bottle of wine, 
and the pleasant seat at the dinner-table ; that 
hardly any contract is considered sealed unless 
a bottle of wine is broken over it. Many and 
many a bargain is made on the strength of 
the oyster or champagne supper which is ex- 
pected to follow. You must appeal to men's 
stomachs if you want to trade with them. Is 
that the basis of a legitimate business ? If 
we sell a bale of dry goods or a box of sugar, 
is it necessary to give our customer something 
to eat, or something to drink, or something to 
smoke, in order to produce a pleasant impres- 
sion ? Is there so much competition in busi- 
ness as to make such a custom necessary ? 
Is it not better to do a little, and to do it hon- 
estly, than to do much and do it in such a 
way as that? Is it not better, friends, to be 



1 8 SNAEES, 

poor, than to weave such webs for ourselves 
and our customers ? 

But, my young friend, you tell me you are 
strong and able to resist temptation. Buoyant 
with the consciousness of power within your- 
self, you laugh at danger. Well, I have seen 
a strong man walking on the icy sidewalk at 
night. He walks safely for a while; but all 
at once, when least he thinks it, he puts his 
foot on a slippery spot, and down he goes. 
You have done that, and so have I, many a 
time. The icy sidewalk is but a type of a 
man's life. You may walk never so bravely ; 
unless you have yourself under perfect con- 
trol, there is no habit under heaven that is so 
sure to bring you to ruin as this of which I 
am speaking. I sometimes think there is no 
power quite like the power of that habit. It 
is almost omnipotent ; for, if once it gets into 
your life, it creates a craving that will not be 
satisfied, that roars like a wild beast for its 
prey. It will have drink, no matter what it 
costs, and no matter what the end may be. 



SNAEES. 19 

I would that I could faithfully paint the hor- 
rors of the drunkard's life. I would that I 
might unroll the panorama of his career with 
all its lurid coloring even to the last scene 
with its wrecked hopes, its broken hearts, and 
its gloorny grave. 

Then, brethren, I next come to that name- 
less temptation, which I should be recreant 
not to speak of, and which yet for the sake of 
delicacy I dare not speak of in plain terms. 
It is the rust, it is the rust, which not only 
takes all brightness from the chain, but also 
eats into its strength and destroys it. It is 
something which throws a shadow over your 
moral nature, and hurts you beyond com- 
pare. You know when the temptation first 
enters the mind, you know how delusive it is, 
how it spreads itself like a pall over your life, 
while, as it were, you go to the funeral of 
your self-respect. 

You know how easy it is to commit other 
sins when once you have yielded to that temp- 
tation. There are some habits which, like 



20 SNAEES. 

small doors, lead to narrow apartments in 
which only a single sin resides ; but this habit 
is a great gateway, that, turning on its creak- 
ing hinges, opens into a vast domain wherein 
a thousand bad spirits have their abode. 

Through its influence the marriage contract 
itself is dimmed and weakened. It destroys 
the relation between the husband and the 
wife ; and unless a man can control his lusts 
and his appetites, he can never enter into the 
kingdom of home. 

If you are absolutely true to yourself, there 
is no nobler man than you on the earth. If 
your allegiance to what is physically honor- 
able is unquestioned, if you can stand up in 
the fulness of physical integrity and look the 
Almighty in the face without a blush, you are 
a member of the true order of nobility. Few 
men can do this. Few men are there who 
have not sacrificed at the red-flamed altar of 
passion. It is partly the fault of our early 
education, and greatly the fault of the fast age 
in which we live ; an age which unduly and 



SNAEJES. 21 

unnaturally stimulates the bad passions, as 
well as the loftier ambitions of mankind. 
Yes: I impeach your society, — the society 
here, and in every great business community 
in America. It admits to its most exclusive 
circles men who ought to have no welcome 
from pure women. If a man is a genius, is a 
poet, or an orator, we never think to ask about 
his moral character. If a man is rich and 
powerful, he is courted and flattered, though 
he be foul as a sepulchre. 

When a man gets rich, and especially if his 
riches come too easily, how strange it is, how 
inevitable it is, that, in the large majority of 
cases, he begins his new career by spurning 
the laws of physical purity ! It is a marvel. 
"'Tis true, 'tis pity; and pity 'tis, 'tis true." 
Why, brethren, in America we are almost 
losing the central idea of home. The purity 
of our homes is being dimmed and tarnished 
by this looseness which is protected by public 
opinion ; and that delicious aroma which once 
made them so beautiful is fast disappearing. 



22 SNARES. 

It is considered so very slight a thing for a 
man to do this kind of wrong. It is hardly 
any thing against a man's character; it is 
nothing against a man's standing in the com- 
munity, — if he happens to be wealthy espe- 
cially, — that the world knows he is thoroughly 
impure. Men smile at it; women take the 
bad man's hand, and admit him to their pres- 
ence, when they ought to be ashamed to let 
him throw his shadow upon their lives. You 
are not brave, good women ; you are not true 
to your better instincts ; you are not dignified , 
you are not queenly ; for even you stand by 
his side, laugh as he laughs, and there is no 
word of rebuke from your lips, while God 
looks down and frowns on you as well as on 
him. 

I impeach our society because we move so 
rapidly, and our love for gold is so great, that 
we teach young men to marry the girl who is 
rich rather than the girl who is sensible, noble, 
and true. Money first, and whatever else 
may come afterwards. No matter for the 



SNARES. 23 

other things, if only the gold is there. Like 
charity, it throws a cloak over almost every 
thing. I have spoken to you plainly on this 
point, friends, because plain words come most 
naturally to my lips. It is hard for me to 
cover up my severe criticism of this matter. 
You know I am in the right ; you know the 
danger that lies in your path. You should 
think of it : it is time that it were impressed 
upon your minds. I dare not shirk my duty 
to tell you that as a community we are grow- 
ing careless and shameless. 

Then there is another, not the least of the 
great temptations to which a young man is 
subject, which comes under the general head 
of gambling. Gambling is a logical and prac- 
tical result of love of excitement : it is the in- 
evitable sequence of a desire to be rich in a 
hurry, and of an unwillingness to pay the 
legitimate price for money. All the world 
gambles ; all classes in the community gam- 
ble. In hot climates, .the whole thing is regu- 
lated because it cannot be prohibited. In the 



24 SNAEES. 

temperate zones it is ignored. In the South 
it is protected by government, and in spite of 
the religious sentiment of society. In the 
North, it is carried on sub rosa; and religion 
only feebly denounces it. Like a vampire, 
that habit is sucking into the life-blood of the 
lower classes. In New York, it is doing more 
harm, it is exerting a greater demoralizing in- 
fluence, than almost every thing else. 

It is a habit which, once acquired, is never 
lost, or hardly ever. It requires the force of a 
giant to break its chains. If once you yield 
submissive to its commands, it makes you its 
slave ; you lie prostrate before it ; you are 
utterly helpless, bound hand and foot. It is 
like opium-eating. It comes on by degrees ; 
it steals with a wonderful subtilty through all 
the system ; and when once it has impreg- 
nated your being, it holds you fast to the end, 
and in its ruthless grasp it keeps you till you 
die. Are there in this presence those who 
stand on the threshold of that habit ? Oh, I 
doubt it not ! Not only one poor victim, per- 



SNAEES, 



25 



haps a score who have felt the influence of 
the excitement drawing them into its eddy, in 
the centre of which is the vortex of ruin. 

The poor boy comes after dark from his 
attic. He walks along the streets friendless 
and alone. His life is dull and monotonous ; 
he is enticed by the tempter, who whispers in 
his ear that sentence which has been the death- 
warrant of many a man, " What's the harm?" 
He enters the gilded palace, and finds every 
thing to eat, and every thing to drink, and all 
things pleasant. Cheering words are heard 
there, and friendly pretensions are made. 
The place is so very unlike his dismal room. 
Everywhere they are playing cards, they are 
throwing dice, and taking up from the table 
two dollars for the one thrown down. The 
poor boy has no friend to take him by the 
hand and lead him out. He is hardly him- 
self, hardly accountable for the next step : a 
species of insanity, a kind of morbid excite- 
ment, takes hold of him, and leads him on in- 
sensibly, until he has gone further than he 

2 



26 SNARES. 

ever dreamed of going. It is only a dollar 
that is asked, and he has a dozen in his pock- 
et. He is lucky, and finds two for the one 
he put down. He puts the two down, and 
takes up four, and puts the four down and 
loses the whole. Then, when every dollar is 
gone, he stakes his honor, and so is in debt ; 
and debts of honor must be punctually paid. 
Then the man who smiled upon him, and 
bade him try his luck, the man who oifered 
him drink at the counter, the man who joked 
with him, and told him anecdotes that made 
him laugh, who surrounded him with all pre- 
tensions of friendship, — pretensions which 
were only the net spread to catch the unwary, 
— that man, when the boy ow^es him money, 
tells him to get it at once, no matter how, or 
he will ruin him. Ruin him ? That has al- 
ready been accomplished. The boy takes the 
money out of his master's till. He does not 
mean to steal. Very few men do mean to steal 
when they begin such a career as that. He 
honestly intends to put the money back. Nay: 



SNARES. 27 

he vows within himself that he will not only- 
put the money back, but that he will end that 
habit for ever. And he means what he says ; 
perhaps prays God to help him. But when 
he pays the money to the friend, the old 
charm comes over him. He is again mag- 
netized by excitement, and before he knows it 
is gone. He takes more money out of his 
master's till, and you will find him soon up 
yonder in the State prison. You will find 
him there with the canker-worm in his heart, 
while the angels weep over him. You will 
find him there with blasted hopes, sitting in 
sackcloth and ashes, willing to give every 
thing on earth if he could only recall his lost 
honor. But it is gone, and it comes not 
again. 

Now it only remains for me to tell you of 
some remedies ; and I must not tax your pa- 
tience long in telling you how to avoid the pit- 
falls and dangers to which I have referred. I 
will speak, not in the phraseology of admoni- 



28 " SNAEES. 

tion which is common to the pulpit, but in the 
plain simple language of experience. 

I, too, have seen what life is made of. I 
have not been talking to you merely from ob- 
servation. I krow that what I have said is 
true. I have seen the wretchedness and woe 
with which these places are draped as with 
invisible embroidery. I have spent long weary 
hours in the dens of cities, and seen young 
men led on step by step to their ruin. I am 
sure that I exaggerate nothing; nay, more, 
that it is quite impossible at such a time as 
this to tell one-half of the terrible truth. And 
as I v^ould warn a friend against plunging 
into a deceptive and dangerous current, so I 
warn you against the vices which dog your 
steps, and strive to take you captive. 

The first thing to do, if you are strangers 
here, — I hardly dare to utter the thought, it is 
so trite and common, ■— is to keep your old 
home away back in the country in fragrant 
remembrance. Do not forget the father or 
the mother or the dear sisters. Recall them, 



SNARES, 29 

and their wishes respecting you, until the dim 
shadows of that home seem close to you, and 
until its sweet influences come trooping around 
you like a band of angels to stand between 
you and all danger. 

In cities, young men grow away from the 
old folks. It is one of the bad habits of the 
time. But I tell you it is one of the prognos- 
tications of evil in a man's life when he forgets 
the old gray-haired father far away. Boys 
think, nowadays, that it does not comport with 
manly dignity to receive advice from parents. 
It does not comport with their dignity, after 
they are twenty-one years old, to kneel down 
by the chair and say their prayers as they used 
to when they were younger. Oh, no ! a 
man who has seen life, who is a little proud 
of his knowledge of the world, does not care 
to do that. It is the fashion, nowadays, to 
keep one's religion so closely to one's self that 
it is very difficult to discern whether one has 
any or not ; and as for country fathers and 
mothers, with their awkward ways and their 



30 SNARES. 

bad grammar, — well, we are just ashamed of 
them. But I can tell you one thing, — fathers 
and mothers cannot be replaced when they are 
gone. I would give the best ten years of my 
life at this moment, if I could see my dear old 
father and mother, and say to them, Forgive 
me for my thoughtlessness : I didn't do what 
was right; I was careless of your comfort; 
forgive me, and bless me. I can't do it. More's 
the pity. I have wept because I can't do it. 

I look on that poor faded picture of the 
good old man hanging on my wall, and I re- 
member how my career began. He would 
take me by the hand, and say, " Goodness is 
above all things else ; " and though he said it 
so impressively, I used to turn my back, say- 
ing, " It is an old man's prose." I wanted to 
see what life is made of, and I did. I have 
seen it all. And now, I would to God that I 
could go back and sit by that poor old man's 
side, and hear him tell me the story all over 
again. Recall those foolish years ? It is too 
late ; I can't recall them. 



S NAMES, 31 

But I tell you, if you have fathers or if you 
have mothers, keep them in your hearts very 
carefully ; and remember that when the proph- 
et said. Honor thy father and mother, he gave 
to you the secret key that opens the door of 
life, — of life eternal. You find it hard to 
appreciate this now; but you will know it 
some day, when you are older, and have chil- 
dren of your own. 

Then there is one other thing of which I 
must speak. You ought to have an ambi- 
tion to have a home of your own. There is 
not a young man within reach of my voice 
who is not looking towards that consummation 
of his earthly hopes and labors. It is a legiti- 
mate ambition. It is a worthy one ; and I bid 
you keep it close to your hearts, and conse- 
crate it with your daily prayers. You are to 
have a wife ; a good wife I hope. For Heav- 
en's sake get a sensible one, and not a fash- 
ionable woman to be your help-meet. It is 
not so easy to find sensible women nowadays 
as it was formerly. Somehow or other young 



32 SNAEES. 

girls think more of fashion, more of dress, 
more of diamonds, than almost any thing else ; 
and it is very hard for a young man to find a 
true-hearted girl who is willing to be poor with 
him, and to commence down at the foot of 
the mountain. It is hard to find one who is 
willing to wear a gingham dress instead of a 
silk one, and a plain wedding ring, instead of 
rich jewels. 

Yes : look forward to a home of your own, 
and get ready for it. Get ready for it by con- 
secrating yourself to a pure and true man- 
hood. Look forward to the ideal home, and 
strive to make it your own. Keep yourself 
so pure in body, so pure in heart, so true in 
spirit, that when the time comes you will not 
look back to your young days with regret. 
It is the great charm of life to find yourself 
the centre of a home circle. It is a man's 
richest possession, worth more than his mil- 
lions, to have a loving woman standing by 
his side, — his help-meet and his best friend. 
Who has a true wife has one of God's best 



SNAEES. 33 

jewels ; and he who is to have a true home 
must make himself worthy of it. 

Last of all, in order to make this life serene, 
you must connect yourself with some relig- 
ious organization. The Church is God's in- 
stitution. There are a great many young 
men who sneer at religion; and almost all 
young men seem to feel that religion is a nau- 
seous drug to be taken sometime, but to be 
avoided as long as possible. Worldly wisdom 
never kneels in prayer, and looks askance with 
a smile of contempt on the lip at those who 
do. If I should ask a young man here to close 
my services with prayer, T should do only w^hat 
is quite right, what you ought to be prepared 
to do at any time. It would be a strange 
task to put upon you. Friends, we must 
always live in a prayerful mood ; we must 
always breathe a prayerful atmosphere ; and 
he who lives in sworn alliance to the Church 
puts on a uniform beneath which the heart 
always beats more bravely than under a citi- 
zen's dress. 

2* 



34 



SNAEES, 



If you would lead a truly successful life, 
you must indeed be religious in its best sense. 
You ought to connect yourself with an organ- 
ization whose end and aim is the redemption 
and fortification of the soul. Within these 
walls you are safe. They are a fortress unto 
you. Come here, go anywhere ; only attach 
yourself to that Christian faith which has been 
the blessing of your mother and the stay of 
your father, and of all the generations of the 
past. 

These are the temptations to which you are 
subject. You know them all better than I do. 
These are the remedies which will help you, 
and you know them as well as I do. Pray to 
God that you may never stumble into the pit- 
fall, or be caught in the snare, but that you 
may walk with a sure step in the narrow path, 
and at last be met on the shore of eternity by 
those who gave you birth, and rocked you in 
your cradle. 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 



IL 

NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

EccL. V. 12 ; " The sleep of the laboring man is sweet, 

TT is no ordinary blessing for a young man 
to be sheltered by an American roof, and 
surrounded by the influences of democratic 
society. We of America believe in the sanc- 
tity of work, and herein lies our national 
strength. Across the water, the nobleman is 
one whose especial prerogative is to do noth- 
ing ; he belongs to an exclusive class ; he is 
taught to look with contempt upon manual 
labor and manual laborers, and to feel that he 
is made of a better stratum of clay than what 
are called common people. But history proves 
that the family which does nothing runs at last 
from the heroism in which it began, to utter 
and complete worthlessness. 

In America, the only type of nobleman is 
the workingman ; the man who, twenty years 



38 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

ago, was poor ; who during all those years has 
toiled along the upward path, governed alike 
by caution and courage, and having attained 
to competency has surrounded himself with 
all those literary and artistic influences which 
broaden his sympathies and make him an in- 
fluence in the community. The only noble- 
man that can ever be the legitimate product 
of popular institutions is the man who some- 
time in his life has worked, and worked hard, 
with his hands as well as his brains. 

How glad we are, then, that we live in a 
society which offers an incentive to every boy, 
and spurs the young man on, by telling him 
that all things are within the grasp of a deter- 
mined will ! 

In a monarchy, men work on a dull, dead 
level from generation to generation. The 
business which the father does is transmitted 
to his son as surely as the father's features, 
the color of his eyes, or the peculiarities of his 
character. The boy dreams of nothing higher. 
Society is cut up into classes, and practically 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 39 

it is well-nigh impossible to pass the barrier 
between one clique and another. There is no 
incentive whatever given to the poor boy to 
urge him ever to become a rich and honored 
man. 

Here, on the contrary, ancestry goes for 
nothing. We never look into a man's past : 
we count only upon his future. We never 
ask him who his grandfather was : we do not 
even care if he never had a grandfather. We 
have only one word to utter, and it is this : 
" No matter who you are, do all you can do, 
be all you can be, and you shall be paid for 
it." That is the secret impulse in American 
society. That is the electric power of prog- 
ress. That is what urges the poor mechanic 
at his bench to become an inventor; that is 
what spreads its benediction over all classes, 
and lifts us all up into a common rivalry, 
making our homes better by making our 
hearts more ambitious. I am saying some- 
thing which is very trite, when I tell you, gen- 
tlemen, that you are the architects of your 



40 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

own fortunes ; that in the next twenty years 
it will depend upon your own hearts whether 
you are great or small, whether you occupy a 
high and an honored position or one unhon- 
ored and disgraced. 

The days before you are blank pages, and 
on their white surfaces you may write what- 
ever you will, — a career heroic and noble, or 
wretched and mean. 

As you stand now upon the very threshold 
of your new work, as you look forward hoping 
to make these dreams that yon have dreamed 
realities in the years to come, if you ask what 
advice I have to give, I tell you, first of all, 
and I tell you with as much emphasis as I 
can command, never, under any circumstan- 
ces, trust to what is called Luck. It is sure 
to fail you when you need it most. He who 
plays the game of chess successfully, — that 
is, he who wins it in the end, — makes each 
move calmly and deliberately, conscious of 
its importance, and hoping that in doing so 
he is taking one step forward towards the 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 41 

victory. It is so in the great game of life too. 
The man who is in a hurry never wins suc- 
cess. You must be cahn as well as coura- 
geous. The man who is filled with a lofty 
purpose, whose spirit is high and heroic, who 
scorns what is beneath him, whose eye is fixed 
upon some goal in the sky, and who works 
with a steady will, determined that each day 
shall bring him nearer to his ideal, almost 
always achieves his mission, and always lifts 
himself at every step into a higher atmosphere 
of moral dealings and of social influence. 

The man who aims at nothing always 
hits it. 

Success nowadays can be reduced to math- 
ematical principles. Pay the price, and you 
shall have what you want. Work calmly, 
work persistently, work with a purpose, and 
every year shall witness your progress. 

The trouble with us in America is, that we 
are very impatient, and think to accomplish 
a great deal in a very short time. One man 
on the street who makes a " lucky hit," and 



42 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

for his little investment draws out an enor- 
mous amount, does more than can be dreamed 
of to demoralize the community. A thousand 
others, unwilling to work for the money they 
hope to get, too hasty in temper to wait twen- 
ty years for the result of twenty years' toil, put 
their small venture upon the wheel, to lose it 
in the end. 

There are so many men in the community 
who are always just going to accomplish their 
mission. They never do the great thing ; they 
always spurn the little gains of to-day, and 
are hopeful concerning the great gains that 
are coming to-morrow. Micawber-like, they 
are impatient at the delay of good fortune, 
but are very sure that their turn to be rich 
will come soon ; and so they wait, until at last 
some friend puts upon their tombstone, as 
their proper obituary. For forty years he was 
just going to, and then he died. It is not well 
to live in commercial air-castles, and yet it is 
done every day by scores of foolish men. 

There is a logic, a severe logic, and an indis- 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 43 

putable and irresistible logic in business. You 
must accord with the normal conditions of 
success, or the victory will never be attained. 
He who lives in air-castles when he is young, 
generally ends his days in the poor-house. 
Most of my companions of fifteen years since, 
who hoped towards large things, but were not 
faithful in little things, to-day wear seedy 
coats : they are hoping still, but their hopes 
will never come to fruition. Never trust to 
luck : it is an ignis-fatuus, born in the moral 
swamp, and it invariably leads men, if they 
follow it, into the mire at last. 

Look at the lives of the giants in this great 
city : ask them, as they sit on the throne of 
their magnificent commercial success, and 
look back through twenty -five or thirty years 
of changes, of hard work, of constant and per- 
sistent labor, — ask them if there was any luck 
in their lives. In nine cases out of ten, they 
will tell you, " No ! success comes not by 
chance : it comes out of the brave hand and 
out of the brave heart that dares to be faithful 



44 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

in the common work of daily life ; it comes 
out of that manly independence that dares to 
do the drudgery of to-day, that after a while 
it may climb up the ladder of fame and 
fortune." 

How often was it said a few years ago, 
when Webster made his great speech against 
Hayne, — you and I have heard it a thousand 
times from the lips of these over-sanguine but 
bad philosophers, — " Oh, how lucky some men 
are to have so grand an opportunity! It 
comes, and simply takes them in its arms, lifts 
them up as it were, whether they will or no, 
and puts them on the pinnacle ; and they are 
the observed of all observers, and the envy of all 
their companions." And yet those who knew 
Mr. Webster knew that all this was false. 
The one single three hours' speech, young 
men, which gave to him his glory and his 
fame ; which sounded his name from the Alle- 
ghanies to the Mississippi ; which made all the 
men of the North feel that a mighty statesman 
had come at last, — that three hours' speech 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 45 

was the work of the twenty years behind it. 
The great orator confessed again and again, 
that if he had not toiled in obscurity, had not 
labored faithfully by day, and faithfully by 
night, year after year, when the golden mo- 
ment came he would not have been strong 
enough to grasp the opportunity and make it 
his own. 

How often do you hear of the luck which 
attends the physician, who for many and many 
a month sits silent in his office, and then, all 
at once, through a mere accident perhaps, is 
called to a critical case! He watches the 
pulse of the sick man by day and by night ; 
he feels the beating of the heart ; he is master 
of the situation; he commands the disease, 
and, though it has a firm hold upon the poor 
patient's vitals, it obeys his will as the slave 
obeys the king ; and the poor man rises from 
his bed in health to bless the doctor. You 
look upon it and say, " What a piece of good 
fortune ! " Nonsense ! there was no good 
fortune in it. It was only one of those oppor- 



46 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 

tunities which rise to the surface of society 
every day ; and the physician who in that sick 
room made his reputation, and perhaps his 
fortune too, put into that single case the re- 
sult of many a year of hard and faithful study. 
If he had not been true in the months behind 
him, that opportunity would have slipped 
through his grasp, and to-day he would be sit- 
ting in his study and waiting for his patients. 

It is so in the career of the lawyer. The 
man who works in his boyhood ; who, what- 
ever he undertakes, — whether it is of great 
importance or little, — puts his whole soul 
into his work, and does it as a man should do 
it, — always runs across some golden opportu- 
nity that bears him on its pinions above ordi- 
nary humanity. 

Now, gentlemen, it is so, I take it, in busi- 
ness life. I have studied with unusual care 
the biographies of the rich men of America ; 
I have talked with some of the most influen- 
tial merchants of our city, men who are in the 
midst of their gray hairs, who are standing on 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 47 

their millionsj and who have behind them 
twenty or thirty, and even forty, years of work ; 
and I have received invariably the one answer 
to my question, " How much of your money 
comes simply as the result of good luck?" 
That answer has been, " Absolutely nothing." 
Now, then, what is it that makes the man ? 
If, years hence, you are to stand in honored 
positions, what are the attributes of character 
that will command success ? Why, brothers, 
you know just as well as I do, the secret ; and 
you know, also, whether you are on the road 
to success or not. You know the conditions 
of victory; and you know whether you are ac- 
cording with those conditions, or whether you 
are simply floating like a piece of timber on 
the current, to be carried here and there or 
anywhere according to the flow of the river. 
A strong will, a large stock of patience, and a 
great deal of hard work, these are the corner- 
stones of a good man's character, these are the 
solid granite blocks on which you can safely 
build. 



48 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

He who builds his house quickly puts into 
it green timber, and is careless about his other 
materials. In a few years the timber cracks, 
and the house has lost half its value. He who 
builds in solid fashion, block by block, with 
honest work, with patient hope that the end 
will justify his toil, and with persistent deter- 
mination to do his very best, lives in his house 
secure from any tempest that may arise. He 
makes such a house his fortress ; and he sits 
within it, as the knight of old within his cas- 
tle-walls, knowing that it will be a sufficient 
protection for his children and his children's 
children. 

Young men, an earnest will can accomplish 
any thing, — any thing that is good, and any 
thing that is bad. It is the master element in 
man's nature ; it is very like omnipotence. It 
can fix your purpose, and it can keep it fixed 
until the end is reached, no matter how diffi- 
cult the path may be. He who has a strong 
will has half won the victory. He who has a 
strong will, and a consecrated one, already 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 49 

feels the laurel on his brow. In a city across 
the river, a poor miser died a little while ago. 
He had piled up almost a million. How had 
he done it ? Through the influence of a per- 
sistent determination to be rich, cost what it 
might. He laid by dollar after dollar ; he con- 
trolled his appetites and his passions ; he sub- 
jugated all those elements of his nature which 
craved for the dear influences of a home, the 
blessed beauty of a wife's and of children's 
love. These things he put under his feet. 
He utterly annihilated them, and became as 
stony as though he had no heart. He kept 
that vision of gold in view all the while, and 
never once lost sight of it. There never was 
an opportunity to save a dollar that went by 
unchallenged. He always saved: he never 
gave. To be sure, the man's soul was dwindled 
to a dot ; it shrivelled all up in him ; it became 
at last a mere microscopic atom, so small that 
perhaps the Angel of Resurrection will scarce- 
ly find enough to take up to heaven : but the 
man achieved his wretched work. He had 

3 



50 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

will enough to conquer himself, and to subdue 
the world ; and before he died, he had piled up 
a million of dollars. Such persistency in a 
good cause would have made a saint. The 
blessed men w^ho, centuries ago, gave up their 
homes, their friendships, and every thing that 
is generally thought desirable, and spent a 
weary life in desert solitudes, and died at last 
starved into sainthood, showed no greater will 
than this poor miser. He will be remembered 
only with contempt or pity : they will be revered 
by half of Christendom. It takes no more 
will to be a very good man than it does to 
become a very bad one. 

Again: it seemed an impossible work, a 
few years ago, to stretch a wire across the 
Atlantic Ocean. When you and I first heard 
of it, it seemed to us very like an Arabian 
Night's tale. We laughed at the audacity of 
the man who dared attempt it. He was sim- 
ply the victim of his own wild imagination ; 
and you and I proved by the best science ex- 
tant, by means of our charts, showing the 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 51 

currents in the ocean, that it was an utter im- 
possibility, that it was a waste of money and 
of brains, and that he who dreamed of doing 
it was fitter for a madhouse than for our con- 
fidence. 

We have forgotten all about our incredulity 
now. It seems so simple a thing to sit in 
London and whisper to a friend in New York, 
that we wonder if we ever laughed when the 
scheme was proposed. We did laugh never- 
theless, and heaped all kinds of ridicule on the 
Quixotic plan. 

It was at length achieved. A man, in- 
spired by a force of will that wakes our won- 
der, by a determination so fixed that neither 
scorn nor ridicule could change him, that 
neither the persuasions of friends nor the 
menaces of foes could move him, carried his 
project single-handed, — and his hands were 
giant-hands, — until at last he stood upon 
the western side of the Atlantic, and stooping 
picked up this end of the wire, and touching 
his tongue with it felt the thrill of victory that 



52 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

had sped two thousand miles to tell him he 
was right, and the world wrong. 

Again : said a man, when the question con- 
cerning the Pacific Railroad was mooted, 
" Good heavens, sir ! do you mean that you 
can lay a road from here to the Pacific Ocean, 
rail by rail ? " " Yes." And the thing was 
done at last. It was a project so mighty that 
we only looked at it in wonder, as it pro- 
gressed, and scarcely doubted that it would 
fail in the end. Neither you nor I believed 
in the possibility of such a thing as that years 
ago. It was done simply through the un- 
alterable determination of a few men, whose 
will stretched one hand towards the Pacific 
and the other towards the Atlantic, and 
brought them close together. They brought 
the Alleghanies and the Rocky Mountains 
into the same neighborhood, and we are thus 
enabled to utilize the plains of the West, and 
multiply the commercial interests of that 
great section of our country. 

So you see, as well as I can tell you, that 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 53 

he who has a strong and mighty purpose of 
his own, if he never wavers, is sure to achieve 
success in the end. Whatever a man has 
really determined to have, that he will have. 
If you can only become as it were inspired • 
if you can only be baptized into the spirit that 
never yields and never wavers; if you can 
only make your ideal and then keep it in sight, 
— before the gray hairs grow upon your head, 
you will stand upon the pinnacle that you 
have looked at, and you will do more than the 
work you dreamed of in your boyhood days. 
Young men, I wish you to believe that 
God has himself put you into the midst of 
your business ; that you are his servants, and 
not the servants of Mammon ; that you are 
not simply drudges, trying to pile up a few 
dollars, but component parts of a world that 
must be better or worse for the lives you live. 
He who has a true idea of life does the low- 
liest work with manly dignity and with a 
kingly heart, and throws into the humblest 
toil a religious influence. 



54 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 

My impression is, that the young men of 
to-day do not study their business as a man 
studies a profound problem. They do not 
make themselves masters intellectually of all 
its ramifications and of all its possibilities. 
They work because they must, and not be- 
cause to work is part of life's best discipline. 
I have been greatly surprised in talking with 
our merchants to find how much they knew 
practically of the world they live in, how care- 
fully they have followed the channel of their 
own business in all its various directions, so 
that they can tell its exact influence upon any 
given class in society; how they have reck- 
oned the exact influence of the gold market, 
the grain or cotton crop, the Cuban insurrec- 
tion, or a startling editorial in a daily news- 
paper upon their trade. Their business 
demands of them that they shall know all 
about the grave problems of political econ- 
omy, the movements of philanthropy even. 
One cannot be successful as a merchant with- 
out becoming a careful student. Hence it is 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 55 

that the business men become our most effi- 
cient public officers. 

Young men, if you are to have a noble 
career, you must be bold, you must be brave, 
you must be persistent, and you must be a 
careful student of men and things. We had 
two generals in the army who serve as types 
of the man who fails and the man who suc- 
ceeds. The one stood at the head of his 
forces (and they were to be counted by the 
scores of thousands), and looking towards the 
coveted prize, felt within himself not the 
power to take it, but a fear lest he might 
not be able to do so. He went into the fight 
with a good purpose enough, but with no 
determination ; and so when the battle grew 
hottest he gave the order to retreat, and 
though a thousand lives were lost, the work 
was to be done all over again. That man 
was the type of those thousands in every-day 
life who try, but do not try hard enough; 
who, if they would, could win, but who retreat 
in the presence of the foe. 



56 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK. 

The other general marched at the head of 
his forces, and whenever he took a single step 
forward, he kept it, no matter what it cost. 
He never retreated. He listened to no man's 
fears, obeyed no man's timid counsel. He 
was simply master of the situation; and so 
through a whole tide of blood, and through a 
whole world of woe, he marched over the 
graves of his comrades, and at last, on the 
eastern slope of the Alleghanies, received 
the hilt of the sword that for four years 
had caused our country so much sorrow and 
so many tears. 

It is always so. Know what you are going 
to do, and then do it. Be sure that you are 
master of the situation, and then stand in 
manly dignity, throwing into your work all 
your energy, and all your character. 

Young* man, this word that I have spoken 
to you to-night is a prosy word I fear, and 
yet it is a true one. If you heed it, you will 
never regret it. If you heed it not, the years 
to come will bear sad witness to the truth of 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 57 

what I say. You are now standing upon the 
threshold of a thousand possibilities. You 
are either to rise high, or to fall low, and your 
destiny is in your own hands. I do not care 
who you are ; whether you have been rocked 
in a rosewood cradle or in the cradle of pov- 
erty, you have the opportunity to make your 
life worthy and great. I do not pity you be- 
cause of the circumstances by which you are 
surrounded. I do not care a jot or a tittle 
for the burdens you are compelled to bear. I 
do not grieve for the hard work you are 
doing. These things are a part of your dis- 
cipline ; they make up your education ; they 
are the rounds of the great ladder up which 
you must climb to affluence and position. 
As you look forward towards the future ; as 
you look up to the good you hope to achieve ; 
as you look into the days to come, — ^^ remem- 
ber these words. Place no faith in luck ; it is 
a false guide. You are to depend only upon 
honest intentions and hard work. 

Believe me, brothers, those two things are 
3* 



58 NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 

the only solid foundations for a successful 
career. You may well thank God, if no for- 
tune has been left to you ; for that you 
are born poor is the best thing that ever hap- 
pened to you. And, moreover, you may well 
thank God that you were born in this blessed 
land where there are no barriers to man's 
ambition. You shall have whatever you 
work for ; you shall stand on whatever plane, 
however lofty, your talents fit you for, and 
your strong will can reach. Be persistent, 
but, above all, be noble. Begin life with a 
fixed purpose, and keep to that purpose as 
the sea-captain keeps to his compass. 

Above all, friends, — for every thing ends 
in this at last, — if you would be true men in 
your day and generation ; if you would be 
true husbands and fathers in the future ; 
if you would be all you can be in business, 
and not only successful in dollars and cents, 
but successful also in the manly influence 
which always goes with a strong character, 
see to it that you give your heart to God and 



NOT LUCK, BUT HARD WORK, 59 

to his truth. Never pay away your honor for 
money : that is too great a price to give for 
any thing. Be careful to keep your integrity 
undimmed, and your manhood unstained. 

If with a firm heart, a manly tread, a con- 
sciousness of unlimited power, and a sense 
of the Father's eternal presence, you shall go 
forth, it will be like a true knight of old bear- 
ing your shield upon your left arm, holding 
your brave sword in your right hand, covered 
all over with panoply, and ready to do God's 
work wherever God calls you to do it. 

Brothers, — you stand here on the threshold 
of life, in poverty I hope, while a thousand 
possibilities are beckoning you upward and 
onward. You can reach any point you will. 

As you walk, and as you climb, if you 
would never look back with regret, carry with 
you in your hearts, in your hands, in your 
lives, the blessing of Almighty God, which 
always rests on that soul that has sworn 
fealty to Truth and Righteousness. 



HONESTY. 



III. 

HONESTY. 

2 Cor. xiii. 7 : "Ye shall do that which is honest** 

'VT'OUNG gentlemen, you have entered upon 
a field of labor that is not only wide, 
but filled with great possibilities and with 
grand duties. Your life-w^ork as an element 
of civilization is second to none. Commerce 
moves the world, and moulds public opinion : 
religion consecrates them both. 

It is not an over-honest world into which 
you have come, and in the midst of which 
you are laboring. The golden rule has not 
as large or wide a sway as it should have. 
Jt is a world filled up with pretence instead 
of reality, with gilt instead of gold, with paste 
instead of diamonds, and with hypocrisy in 
the place of religion. 

Your object in your work is the achieve- 
ment of a fortune. You have already learned 



64 HONESTY. 

the secret ; it was whispered to you in your 
cradle. The din of the community gave you 
the watchword when you stood on the thresh- 
old of your career. Money is your end and 
aim. Let me say here that its acquisition is 
at once worthy and noble. But money will 
buy so much nowadays, that you are tempted 
to give too great a price for it. It is the first, 
it is the last necessity of man. 

Every one wants to be known and to be 
esteemed. Every ambitious man wants place 
and honor ; he wants not to die unknown, but 
to have his name upon a thousand lips. In 
order to accomplish these desirable ends, the 
first condition seems to be a fortune. The 
poor man lives unsought, uncared for ; he dies, 
and no man sighs over his grave. His name 
is buried in oblivion, and he goes into 
the night of the world's forgetfulness. The 
rich man has a troop of friends, pretended or 
real. He at least excites the envy of man- 
kind ; he possesses all things that seem to be 
desirable ; he stands in the high place, and the 



HONESTY. 65 

whole generation looks on his grave when he 
dies, and reads the inscription upon the mon- 
ument that perpetuates his memory. So all 
men desire to be rich, because in riches there 
is power. Money is the key that turns in the 
wards of the lock of almost every human 
heart. 

Now, in the first place, I want to impress 
upon you the transcendent importance of the 
work in which you are engaged. In the order 
of Providence, the logical sequence of prog- 
ress runs thus : first the workshop and work- 
man ; then the post-office and the press ; then 
the church lifting its spire, and throwing the 
inspiration of its influence over the commu- 
nity and into the labors of every day. 

I am sorry to confess that over-zealous 
churchmen have too often begun at the wrong 
end. In their desire to convert the heathen 
to Christianity, they have sent to foreign lands 
a thousand Bibles and a thousand missiona- 
ries to explain the Word ; while, treading on 
the heels of the missionaries, a score of unprin- 



66 HONESTY. 

cipled traders have followed, who have de- 
stroyed all the blessedness and all the spiritual 
fruition of holy endeavor. These speculators, 
the representatives of the worst part of our 
civilization, who cheat the natives out of their 
little all, give the lie to the words and prom- 
ises of the missionaries, and make as naught 
all their eloquence and all their sacrifice. It 
were better to anchor in heathen lands, ac- 
cording to the logic of Heaven, a dozen vessels 
freighted with the noblest merchandise of 
Christian civilization, to be sold by Christian 
men ; and then, when the representatives of 
our community have shown their mental, their 
physical, and their moral superiority, the 
Church could come in to mould the history 
of the people. It is true to-day, as it has been 
true always, that they who buy and sell give 
its moral tone to society ; and the Church can 
do nothing until it has consecrated the busi- 
ness of the world. Our merchants are really 
the Atlases who bear upon their broad and 
giant shoulders the whole welfare of mankind. 



HONESTY. 67 

Give me a community in which the merchants 
are really manly, and I will show you a peo- 
ple whose homes are pure., and whose religion 
is approved. 

Now, gentlemen, if this be so, who can 
reckon the harm which dishonest men are 
daily doing ? Who can measure the demoral- 
ization which spreads itself like a pestilence 
over the community when business is corrupt ? 
In the panic from which we have scarcely yet 
recovered, there were certain men who put 
their fingers on the artery of our commercial 
life, and stopped the healthy flow of the vital 
fluid. A fear like a pall spread its shadow 
upon every workshop and upon every street. 
No one knew whether he was secure or in 
danger. It was a holiday in your midst, for 
no one dared to buy or sell. There were 
trembling lips, there were trembling hands, 
there were sinking hearts everywhere ; and 
you felt as though an earthquake was rum- 
bling beneath your business, and that any min- 
ute might bring disaster and ruin. It was 



68 HONESTY. 

the work of only a few men, and yet it so dis- 
turbed the whole community that the very 
pulse of commercial life stood still, and health 
is not even now restored. 

Men in business are like a succession of 
bricks standing on end : if this man falls he 
hits the one close to him, and unless he has 
superhuman strength he tumbles too ; and so 
one dishonest hand in the community, that 
dares to grasp more than belongs to it, clutches 
the welfare of a thousand homes, and hurts 
the hopes and aspirations of half a city. And 
yet New York is so strange a place that 
though four weeks only have gone by since 
that terrible calamity threw its shadow upon 
us, it is all forgotten. No lesson has been 
learned. A month is a generation in such a 
city as this ; and even now you look back to 
that panic, as to a legendary event that hap- 
pened years and years ago. So rapidly do 
we hurry from one day to another. 

Now there are three kinds of men who go 
into business. I want to describe them as 



HONESTY. 69 

fairly and plainly as I can, for your edification 
and instruction. 

First, there is a class of merchants who 
enter upon their career with fair intentions, 
who are treasonably honest, but who have no 
fixed or determined or well-pronounced relig- 
ious principles. They do not interweave 
with their daily doings the law of Christ or 
the love of God ; but they float upon the sur- 
face of events, and hope sometime to take the 
tide at its flood. There are thousands who 
do business without the inspiration of a gen- 
uine love for their work. All they labor for 
is to get enough to pay the rent, and supply 
the necessities of the family. While their 
neighbors, who seem to be filled with a divine 
afflatus, throw the beauty of a transfiguring 
enthusiasm around every transaction, they 
work because they must, and deem it all mere 
drudgery. Such a man never feels the true 
inspiration which insures success. They are 
men who have no zeal, no earnestness. They 
are honest as the world goes, at least in ordi- 



70 HONESTY. 

nary times ; but they will bear being watched. 
They put no more chiccory into their coffee 
than the market will bear, because it would 
injure their business ; but they put in just as 
much as the market will bear, because this in- 
sures greater gain. Their policy is honesty, 
because in the long-run honesty brings more 
dollars and cents to the till. But when the 
times of financial confusion arise ; times that 
try men's souls as though a revolution stirred 
the world ; times when the generation demands 
of each merchant that he shall stand by him- 
self, and stand erect, dignified in his greatness, 
and great in his dignity, — these men, who are 
but the creatures of chance, tumble into ruin, 
or fall into temptation. The small bribe they 
will not take, but the great bribe catches them 
in its web. 

They remind me of the captain who goes 
to sea having a compass, and a vessel properly 
armed and equipped, but who determines to 
run for luck and a favoring tide. He can get 
on well enough so long as the wind favors 



HONESTY. fjl 

him : he will reach Liverpool, if he starts from 
New York, if the wind all the voyage blows 
from the south-west; but in the midst of a 
north-easter, when fog settles down upon the 
waters, when there is danger in the storm and 
danger in the waves, he does not know what 
to do. He cannot command himself, and he 
fails to command his vessel. He may, upon 
the wings of some good fortune, reach the 
goal ; but the chances are strangely and great- 
ly against him. 

Or again, he reminds me of the conscript 
in time of war. He is not like the volunteer 
who, with a great hope and a great self-sur- 
render throbbing in his heart, with tears in 
his eyes as he remembers the cause which is 
in jeopardy, springs to his feet, musket in 
hand, and dares to do and die for his country. 
No : he is rather like the drafted soldier who 
goes into the fight unwillingly and with hes- 
itating steps. He does his duty after a fash- 
ion. Perhaps he is not a coward, perhaps he 
does not skulk in the midst of the din of act- 



72 HONESTY. 

ual warfare ; but there is no warm blood in 
his heart, no love of glory in his heart, and 
the great and good deeds of the true warrior 
are never achieved by his sword. Now, in this 
class, gentlemen, more than half of the com- 
munity are to be found. Half of the men 
who do business do it with no high and wor- 
thy object, with no well-defined purpose above 
the mere desire for gain, with no determinate 
religious principles interwoven with their 
work. It is not hard to predict the end of 
such men. The statistics of our community 
tell what the end will be too plainly and too 
sadly, when they show that eight out of ten 
men fail in business. 

How many are brought to ruin because they 
do not feel that God's providence has put 
them into their particular place, and demands 
of them that they shall pour all the wealth of 
their being into their work, neither I nor you 
can tell. They labor simply for the money 
that comes as the price of labor, and are never 
lifted up with a consciousness that they are 



HONESTY, 73 

helping to do the world's work, and that their 
lives go into the great treasury of the world's 
welfare, to make it better and truer and no- 
bler. I warn you, young men, against allow- 
ing your names to be placed in this category. 
You have a nobler and more worthy lookout 
upon the world than that. You are not 
drudges. You are heaven's stewards, no mat- 
ter what the work you have in charge. You 
will fritter away your best years, you will 
stand in danger of losing your manhood, and 
twenty years from now you will look back with 
regret upon your lives, unless you act under 
the consciousness that you are of God's com- 
mercial priesthood, ordained to add, by your 
honesty and faithfulness, something to the 
world's strength. 

Then I come to the second class. There 
are in every community, especially in a com- 
munity as large as this, certain men who may 
be denominated financial adventurers. They 
are simply buccaneers, and on their flag you 
can see the skull and cross-bones. Their only 
4 



74 HONESTY. 

motto is, No quarter. I sometimes think they 
are the lineal descendants of Judas Iscariot. 
They have shrewdness enough to get hold of 
the money-bag : then they are cunning enough 
to let nobody's hand get into it except their 
own. When you are in their presence you 
instinctively button up your coat. You need 
not fear, however, for they will not steal your 
purse ; there is not enough in it to make it an 
object. They are men whose friendships are 
false, and whose souls are full of hypocrisy. 
They are men whose only ambition is for sil- 
ver and gold, no matter what it costs. If you 
can help them, they smile on you ; but if you 
are in their way, then, like the wheels of Jug- 
gernaut, they grind your bones to dust, and, 
as they go over you, they do not even deign 
to look upon your bleeding corpse with pity. 

These are the men who watch the market 
with a tricky shrewdness. They plan corners ; 
they pinch the corn-market until it yields dol- 
lars to them; they pinch the gold market 
until the yellow metal comes into their hands. 



HONESTY. i^5 

No matter who fails or falls ; no matter how 
much the community suffers in the persons of 
its honest citizens ; no matter how many- 
homes are desolated, and how many hopes are 
withered ; no matter for the manly tears that 
are shed, for the manly hearts that are broken ; 
no matter for any of the better interests of the 
community, they have but one object, and 
that is gold. They get it at the cost of honor, 
at the risk of their souls ; and they spend for 
it the welfare of the whole city. 

Their only prayer is for money, and so they 
are constant worshippers of the golden calf. 

They always remind me of those brutal 
men, who, when shipwrecked and compelled 
to take to the water, instead of buffeting the 
waves on their own account, care so much 
for their wretched, miserable, and worthless 
lives, that when they see the friendless girl or 
the orphan boy clinging to a little spar, and 
hoping thus to reach the shore in safety, fight 
with the woman and with the child, drowning 
them both, and then, putting their own poor 



76 HONESTY, 

unworthy souls upon the log, drift to the 
shore. 

But, you tell me, such men sometimes lead 
brilliant careers. Is it so? If it is so, it is the 
brilliancy of the Alaska diamond, not of the 
real stone ; it is a brilliancy that is not worth 
the having. 

They are, in society, precisely like a hair 
in your watch. The only thing to do is to 
take it out, and throw it away. The only 
thing to do is to make such laws that 
speculators and adventurers will find their 
only rest in the prison where they belong. 
There is no place for them in a well-regulated 
community, for they are just like a plague- 
spot, the minute you touch it you get the dis- 
ease and die. 

Now, friends, a great many young men are 
attracted by such a brilliant — or so-called 
brilliant — career, and hurt for the rest of their 
lives. A man, or a dozen men, of that stamp, 
with nothing to lose and every thing to gain, 
do an infinite deal to misdirect the ambitions, 



HONESTY, 77 

and taint the aspirations of the younger por- 
tion of the community. We all, when we are 
in the springtime of life, delight in that which 
is daring, and find plenty of excuses for that 
which is reckless. Knowing that there is great 
wrong connected with it, we yet throw the 
mantle of charity over it. 

Look at the end of such a man. That end 
will come ere many years, and it is not yonder 
upon the pinnacle of honor; it is not there 
upon the mountain top ; it is not here in your 
grateful hearts; it is not in the midst of a 
community which throbs with thanksgiving 
for such a life ; it is almost always in disgrace, 
in ruin, and in want. Such men live unhon- 
ored, and their only grave is oblivion. 

Young man, never dream of risking your 
all in such a career. Remember, above every 
thing else, that your honor is your chief est 
jewel, and guard that as you would guard 
your life. Never part with your integrity. 
That is the first condition of success ; it is the 
only condition of happiness ; it is the only 
price of immortal life. 



78 HONESTY. 

Now, gentlemen, in the last place, I am to 
describe, unfortunately, a small class in the 
community, — a class that is represented by the 
honest man. To this class belong the men 
who believe in religious principles, and who 
carry these principles into their daily walks ; 
whose religion is not confined within the four 
walls of the church, nor to a public profession 
of belief in Christianity, but is carried in their 
hearts into the business of every day. You 
do not need such a man's bond : you know 
that he values his reputation more than his 
life, and, if need be, will sacrifice all and 
become poor again, rather than look you in 
the face and blush with the consciousness of 
wrong or guilt. Do you tell me there are no 
such men ? Oh, you are mistaken ! I have 
known many such. They are to be found 
here in this community ; they are to be found 
in every community. They are the men who 
make the standard of public morality and vir- 
tue. Theirs are the lives that put an indeli- 
ble stamp upon the world, and give it all its 



HONESTY. 79 

strength, and all its patriotism, and all its high 
moral tone. 

There are men in this city who are just as 
knightly in their business, just as chivalric in 
the spirit in which they do their daily work, 
as those brave warriors of old who scorned to 
stain their Damascus blades with the blood 
of a mere quarrel ; who never stooped to fight 
for what was base or low, but were willing to 
give their lives for what was high, heroic, and 
honorable. 

These are the men who give all its worth 
to your community. "When a city falls into 
the hands of the two classes of men which I 
have already described, then you have social 
anarchy, then you have extravagance in the 
higher classes, and you have crime in the 
lower classes. When the government of a 
city falls into dishonest hands, you will find 
that your elections are controlled by repeaters 
and by demagogues ; you will find mob-law 
rampant in your streets ; you will find your 
public moneys wasted on unworthy objects ; 



8o HONESTY, 

you will find that the judges on the bench 
stain their ermine with verdicts unworthy; 
and in a word you will find most of the 
things which you find in New York. No city 
can long thrive unless its highest offices are 
filled by citizens of undisputed integrity. 
Demagogues and professional politicians tear 
the fair structure down stone by stone, and 
use the materials to build houses for them- 
selves. The public may shiver with the cold, if 
only they are themselves well housed. But 
once dare to give the public weal into the 
keeping of active merchants whose integrity 
is undisputed, and you will find that haunts 
of vice will disappear, courts of justice will 
be impartial, and reforms will reach to the ut- 
most limits of society. 

The young men in the store are just like 
chameleons. They adopt the moral tone of the 
head of the house. If he is sharp and shrewd 
and flippant, these subordinates soon grow 
more careless, and easily yield to temptation. 
If in the counting-room integrity and dignity 



HONESTY. 8 1 

sit, if in the employer's face there is a look 
that scorns things base and mean, every man 
in the establishment is lifted up towards a 
higher standard, and feels the influence at 
once. The tone of the merchant's life is the 
key-note in the lives of all in his employ.^ 

Gentlemen, you who are in middle life, who 
are doing business, your ministry is infinitely 
larger than mine. I speak to the few who can 
gather within these walls. I speak only with 
the poor power that inhabits words. They may 
be earnest words, but they are only words. If 
you have true and knightly souls, you can 
speak in the mighty language of deeds. A 
deed is worth more than a word, and an hon- 
est bargain is worth a thousand sermons. 
You are preaching not in a village church, but 
in the vast cathedral where the whole com- 
munity meets, not once a week, but every 
hour in every day. You are ministering at 
that altar from the midst of whose flames the 
incense of many hopes goes up to heaven. 
The organ-peal in that cathedral is the music 
4* 



82 HONESTY. 

of a thousand mill-wheels on a thousand 
streams ; it is the echoing peal of the ever- 
lasting din of business ; it comes from every 
heart, and it goes to every heart in the whole 
country, influencing ten thousand homes, and 
giving direction to a million lives. 

Brothers, feel the responsibility that rests 
upon you ; feel the magnificence of the work 
which God has given you to do. Walk not 
like slaves from day to day ; but, knowing that 
to do business as an honest man ought to is 
to do God's noblest work, let your lips speak 
the truth, and let your hands do deeds of 
which you shall never be ashamed. You are 
high priests, you are kings before God. 

And so I say to the young men of this city, 
— I say it with all the emphasis of which my 
words are capable, — brothers, you who are 
standing in the springtime of life, be honest ; 
dare to be men ; prize your manhood and 
your honor above all things that earth can 
give ; be upright towards God, be downright 
towards man. 



HONESTY, 83 

Do not mind the financial comet that flashes 
through the heavens and seems to be governed 
by no law, setting the whole community- 
agog. It is only a madcap by whose caprices 
you must not be ruled, and whose eccentrici- 
ties you must not imitate. Be governed rather 
by the fixed stars of truth which shine for ever 
and ever, which are the same yesterday, to- 
day, and always. Put your soul into your 
work ; not your body alone, not your brains 
only, but your soul. Put the best part of 
yourself into your business, put your religion 
into your labor ; dignify that work and trans- 
figure it by infusing into it the spirit of Heaven 
itself. 

He who makes a fortune in a beggarly 
fashion is not the equal of him who does 
manual work in a kingly way. If you are a 
clerk, be the best clerk the sun ever shone 
upon ; if you are a salesman, sell goods as no 
other man ever sold them ; if you sell your 
goods by sample, in Heaven's name let the 
bulk of your goods be something like the sam- 



84 HONESTY 

pie ; if you make tenpenny nails, make such 
nails as never came out of any other man's 
hands ; if you lay bricks for a living, do it as 
though you were ordained from all eternity to 
accomplish precisely that work. 

But some man turns to me and says, — 
some poor weak man says. Dear, kind sir, we 
must cheat a little in order to get along ; if 
we did not adulterate what we sell we could 
not sell it. Nonsense and humbug, and you 
know it ! If you have life enough in you to 
do business at all, do business on honest prin- 
ciples, and you will succeed. Cheating may 
give you a few extra dollars to-day ; but it is 
pretty sure to take not only those extra dol- 
lars to-morrow, but all the rest you have be- 
sides. Take twenty years through, and you 
will find that the man succeeds best who sells 
what he pretends to sell, and who tells the 
truth always. This world of ours is full of 
humbug from beginning to end. Every thing 
is adulterated from coffee up to religion ; and 
if the world needs any thing, if the voice of 



HONESTY, 85 

the community speaking with authority gives 
any advice, it is this : Young man, honesty is 
what we need, it is what we must have. 

Now I must end. If I could concentrate 
the experience of all the rich and true men 
in middle life and in old age who hear my 
voice into one word, if I could concentrate 
the experience of all those men in the commu- 
nity who, like a noble ship, have stemmed the 
waves, and beaten against the winds, and, 
richly freighted, have reached the haven; or, 
turning to the other extreme, if I could concen- 
trate the sad and woful experience of those who 
have started upon the basis of a bad philoso- 
phy, and lost little by little their all, and are 
now only human logs drifting on the stream 
or throMm up upon the banks of time, — I am 
very sure that that one word would be this : 
Young men, honesty is the rule in heaven, and 
honesty is the safest rule upon earth. 

" To thine ownself be true ; 
And it must follow, as the night the day, 
Thou canst not then be false to any man/' 



86 HONESTY, 

He who starts with his heart right towards 
God, and determines to put manly zeal into 
his life, will end gray-headed and honored; 
and his life shall be a benediction from gen- 
eration to generation. 



HOW TO GET MONEY. 



IV. 

HOW TO GET MONEY. 

Acts iv. 37 : " And brought money and laid it at the Apostles' 
feet.'' 

T WANT, Christian friends, to-night to get 
rid of all my clerical prejudices, and look 
upon money-making from the stand-point of 
an honorable, Christian, business man. If I 
do so, I find to my surprise that money-get- 
ting constitutes the nervous system of society, 
and . that gold and silver occupy an exceed- 
ingly important place in the social economy. 
If the love of gold is at the bottom of every 
thing that is bad, it is at the root also of 
almost every thing that is worth the having. 
It controls the individual life, and shapes a 
young man's ends and ambitions. It affects 
the life of the nation, moulding public opin- 
ion, forming laws, raising bulwarks of defence, 
maintaining a well-disciplined army, building 



90 EOW TO GET MONET. 

railroads, which bind State to State, and string- 
ing the telegraph wire from pole to pole, until 
ocean speaks to ocean. It is the corner-stone, 
nay, it is beneath the corner-stone, of our 
churches, and even our charities receive a new 
impulse from its sympathy and generosity, 
and all our means of education, reaching to 
the farthest limit of our civilization, are based 
upon it, and receive from it their power to 
bless. 

As the moon in the heavens affects the sur- 
face of the ocean, so gold and silver affect the 
surface of human life. When there is plenty 
of money, and the market is easy, as you 
business men say, the tidal wave of the gen- 
eral thrift rolls to the utmost limits of our 
society, and seems to bless and cheer all 
classes. The rich man feels more generous 
in his charities, and all the reforms of the age 
go moving through the world as a car on a 
down-grade, gathering fresh impulse every 
moment. At such a time every man feels in 
good humor with himself. As in an Indian- 



HOW TO GET MONEY, 9I 

summer day, when the sun breaks out from 
behind the clouds, we unbutton our overcoats 
and feel more at home with ourselves, and in 
better frame of mind towards the whole world, 
so when the work of your hand and brain is 
successful there is a different atmosphere all 
round about you. You are a better, truer, 
and I had almost said a more Christian man. 

Even the poor workman at his bench feels 
its influence. Far away as he is from the 
financial centre, the life of this vast nervous 
system touches him, and gives him new 
power and light. He no longer looks with 
stingy economy at the crust of bread, but 
makes that crust a little richer, and adds to 
his scanty fare something which looks like 
luxury in his poor life. His children are a 
little better clothed, a few more pictures are 
bought to adorn the room, and a few more 
books or papers to instruct the mind. 

When the money market is tight, its influ- 
ence is felt all over the world. The churches 
beg, and beg in vain. Our charities and pro- 



92 HOW TO GET MONET. 

gressive movements all halt in the way. They 
are like the car on the up-grade, or a car with 
the brakes on. Every thing in society seems 
to move with a double friction, and the wear 
and tear of life are terrible. 

The rich man jingles the silver in his 
pockets, and determines to keep it there. The 
beggar is turned from his door, the pleading 
missionary is unable to get his usual sub- 
scription, and public charity limps and halts. 
The poor man grumbles at the price of flour, 
and stops his newspapers and magazines, and 
thinks the children's threadbare clothes and 
worn-out shoes quite good enough for the 
present. Every thing wears a different and 
gloomy color. 

If a man has no money he dies, and no one 
asks where he is buried, or cares, for that 
matter. If a man has only a little money, he 
rubs along as best he can, with loss of temper 
and loss of health, growing more nervous 
every day, as the cares come heaping on 
him, one after another, and it grows a little 



HOW TO GET MONET. 



93 



and a little harder to pay his rent and fill his 
children's mouths. If a man has a com- 
petence, he is at ease, indifferent to the world's 
blame or praise. He can buy the adulation of 
the crowd, he can almost buy the respect of 
his equals. If he has a very long bank ac- 
count and a plethoric purse, he can surround 
himself with all luxuries ; he can educate his 
mind, and satisfy his esthetic tastes. He can 
live in a splendid house, drive out with his 
costly equipage, and excite the envy of half 
the world. 

Why, brethren, think of the perils a man 
will go through with for money. Gold and 
silver will buy too many men's bodies and too 
many men's souls. They will sometimes 
buy our honor, sometimes purchase our man- 
hood : alas ! it is oftentimes the price of 
womanly purity. It is the great temptation 
in every human being's life. He who can 
resist the glitter of a gold dollar is fit for 
heaven. His life is full of manly vigor, who 
in his poverty can scorn the bribe of wealth, 



94 



HOW TO GET MONEY. 



and like Christ in the wilderness say, Get thee 
behind me Satan. 

An unreasoning love of money finds its 
way in subtle fashion, and in manifold ways, 
into every man's nature. It is just like a 
delicate spider's web, stretched from one end 
of society to the other ; and many and many 
a poor little human fly goes buzzing around, 
and all at once is tangled in the net, and the 
great spider Greed comes out from his retreat 
and binds his limbs w^ith gold and silver 
threads, until at last, enmeshed, he lies 
down to die, a victim to the lust for power. 
Men will do almost any thing for gold. Just 
as a swarm of bees will buzz around a clover- 
blossom, so we hurry to that point where 
there are dollars and cents to be made. It 
makes no difference if we have married a 
wife, and are blessed with children and a 
home : if the Australian sun talks of gold, we 
are willing to sever our affections, willing to 
say good-by to the little ones ; for many a 
long and weary year to turn our backs on all 



HOW TO GET MONET, 95 

the advantages of home, society, and civiliza- 
tion, and in the backwoods, and the miasmatic 
swamps, dig and delve, day after day, week 
after week, month after month, for the yellow 
metal that lies at the bottom of our hopes. 
Or, if the setting sun as it shines upon the 
mountains of California whispers of gold in 
the distant ridges, we turn our backs upon 
New England and the Middle States, incur 
all possible privations, dangers, and trials, 
hoping at last to win that shining dust which 
is the great magician that changes the world's 
frowns into smiles, and makes all men turn 
their faces towards us and lisp our name in 
sweet words of praise, that they may share 
with us what we have got. 

In the very midst of your own society, in 
this great city, there are men who love gold 
so much, that they are willing to run the risk 
of close confinement in the penitentiary for 
years in the vain hope of getting a few 
dollars. There are men in the dens of New 
York who are just as gifted naturally as the 



^6 HOW TO GET MONEY. 

best ot US, who have genius or talent of the 
highest order, who exert their genius and use 
their talents not with that consecrated perse- 
verance which slowly piles up one dollar on 
another, but in the direction of that false aim 
and hope which make a man think that if he 
can grasp a thousand dollars at once, though 
he run the risk of danger, it is well with him. 
The whole world looks at the dollar bill as it 
looks at nothing else. It sees more in it than 
it sees in any thing else. Some men have only 
one prayer, — " O God ! bless me to-day with 
a dollar. Amen." They will work for it, they 
will seek for it, they will cheat for it, and do 
any thing which a man ought not to do, for 
what is worthless unless it is honestly earned. 
Every time you go down town there are 
men who are interested in your going, because 
in your pockets there is money ; and whether 
in car or omnibus, or on the sidewalk, their 
keen eyes watch you, and unless you guard 
your little magic something all the while, 
somebody's fingers will get at it. So common 



EOW TO GET MONET. 97 

is this danger, that you pay millions every 
year for a police force, whose only business is 
to enable you to keep what is your own. 

"Well, this love of money, if rightly con- 
trolled, is the grand and glorious impulse of 
our civilization. I would not take it out of 
the human heart if I could. I believe it to be 
a consecrated fire that urges society to nobler 
achievements. It is a divine force, and 
through its agency the old and worn-out in 
art, literature, and architecture are replaced 
by what is more worthy of the age. When 
men bartered in olden times, and had no 
money, when they gave bulk for bulk, wheat 
for corn, they had few wants, very little ambi- 
tion, and no high aims. But when money 
came to be the representative of the value of 
all things that are to be desired, the old 
farmer two hundred miles away thought for 
the first time, of sending his boy to college, 
or thought of sending him into the centre of 
civilization that he might build up a fortune 
for himself. 

5 



98 EOW TO GET MONEY. 

The discovery of gold was providential. 
The love of it is and will be for ever one of 
the divinest impulses of progress. And if 
this is true, brethren, if such an influence 
attends the acquisition of gold, no wonder 
that the men gathered within the reach of my 
voice to-night, when years ago they stood on 
the threshold of their father's home in the 
country, and looked cityward to the horizon 
line, dreamed great dreams, and with a large 
hope in their hearts began their journey to- 
wards the city. No wonder that, sitting in 
the twilight shade, they thought of the pos- 
sibilities of the future ; of wife, of children, 
and a home in the distant future ; of a posi- 
tion majestic and grand, until at last they 
swore allegiance to that yellow dust that can 
buy the world. No sooner had they made 
up their mind than they packed up their little 
all, and started for this place, and jumped at 
once into the rapid stream, and swam for 
life towards the goal. It was well that 
they did so. Their life on the farm would 



HOW TO GET MONEY, 99 

have been narrow. It would have been a 
good life, and a pure life perhaps; but no 
better, and no purer than it may be in the 
city, if they are as brave as they ought to be. 
The life there would never have stirred them 
to any great ambition, and they might have 
lived and died with the most heroic elements 
in their souls undeveloped. 

Yes : you did well, all of you, to come to 
the city. If you brought your mother's pray- 
ers with you ; if you brought the echoes of 
your father's sturdy admonitions with you; 
if you brought the New Testament, all dog- 
eared by your baby-hands of twenty years 
ago, — you will make a better man of yourself 
through the struggles and rivalries and temp- 
tations and hard work of city life, 

I take it. Christian friends, that the effort to 
get rich is a laudable one. It is one which 
God smiles upon, one which religion approves. 
The effort to get rich is many a man's educa- 
tion ; and there are no more honorable men in 
America than those great-hearted veterans 



lOO HOW TO GET MONEY. 

who are to be found in every community, 
whose grammar is bad, who find it impossible 
to write a letter after the manner of Chester- 
field, whose lips are unaccustomed to the 
silly nothings of polite literature, but whose 
lives have a kind of rugged grandeur, a kind 
of granite majesty in them, that makes us 
look with admiration and wonder. There 
is no education so good as that which comes 
from rough work. He only knows the full 
value of life who has lived it in its darkness 
and walked through its dreary shadows. 

There is many a man here to-night who 
began his career twenty years ago in the very 
humblest position. He swept somebody's 
store out, then built the fires. In his heart 
was a boundless and a blessed hope. He was 
only a freshman then in God's great college. 
He did everybody's bidding ; and if there was 
any drudgery to be done, he was sure to be 
called upon. He was faithful in the humblest 
work that man can do. But under the ex- 
citement of a lofty purpose he rose to be 



MOW TO GET MONEY. lOI 

petty clerk in that store, and then he became 
a sophomore in God's college. Through ex- 
emplary conduct, through honorable dealing, 
he became confidential clerk, and was elevated 
to the position of a junior in God's great 
college ; and then at last he graduated, and had 
his own business sign, or entered the old firm 
a partner, and the money came in dollar by 
dollar, and the dream of twenty years ago 
began to crystallize itself into a reality. The 
brown stone house, and the luxuries of life, 
all of them came to him : for what pleasant 
things will not come to those who have been 
successful in making money? So by means 
of hard work and honest work, he received 
the best education any man can have. 

But, friends, there is one sad thing of which 
I must speak just here. You make your 
money, and you leave it to your boys and 
ruin them with it. There is no fact so patent 
in America as this, that the hard work of 
getting money makes the father, and the 
spending it ruins the boy. No matter how 



I02 HOW TO GET MONEY, 

hard you toil, no matter how much drudgery 
you do, it is the necessary discipline to a good 
education. But when the old man has made 
his money he gives it to his child, who has 
never learnt how to live, and who has never 
had any responsibility of his own. He spends 
the dollars not knowing their value, pampers 
and gratifies his tastes and passions, and ends 
in becoming effeminate and degenerate. 
There is nothing so dangerous as to leave 
your child half a million. The chances are 
ten to one he will never get to heaven. You 
made yourself while you made your fortune ; 
your son may ^^^make himself while spend- 
ing it. Poverty and a warm generous nature 
are the best legacy you can leave your boys. 
Give them all the gold they want, and the 
chances are that in twenty years they will be 
close to the poor-house. He only knows how 
to keep money who has drudged to make it. 
It is far better to put your son into a work- 
shop and compel him to earn his living, than 
to give him a pair of fast horses. If you do 



EOW TO GET MONEY. 103 

the first, he may work his way to a high 
position ; if you do the latter, he is pretty 
sure to drive to the bad. 

What a glamour money throws over every 
thing! You are rich: your daughter has 
admirers in plenty ; they come by the score. 
No matter how plain the child is, the shim- 
mer of the old gentleman's dollars makes her 
face beautiful. It is so all over the world. 
Consciously, sometimes unconsciously, the 
influence of the money-bag changes the com- 
plexion and all the circumstances of life. I 
overheard a girl, I had almost said a sensible 
girl, say the other day : " Oh ! I cannot marry 
him ; he is good, but he is poor ; " as though 
poverty were a crime. Do you know, I have 
a strong feeling in my heart that in these 
. degenerate times our girls are more willing to 
marry a rich man who has a little taint on 
him, than to marry a poor man who has a 
clean face and a clean heart. Is that so ? If 
it is so, God knows there is danger. When 
your society has so false a standard that it can 



I04 sow TO GET MONEY. 

wink at what is base and mean, if baseness 
and meanness has its fist full of dollars, and 
can frown upon honest poverty, good-by to 
your national life, good-by to your social 
purity. One step more and you are over the 
precipice ; one step more and you are in the 
midst of ruin and death. 

Brethren, I believe that poverty is the best 
inheritance of any man. It is well to have 
money ; but money is dangerous, and fills a 
man's life with temptation. If you are strong 
in body, young in years, without a cent, but 
able to look the world in the face and not 
blush, do not be ashamed of yourself. You 
are one of God's noblemen, and your chances 
in heaven are good, and your chances upon 
the earth are good too. Leave your boy 
nothing but a good old thumb-stained Bible, 
and you leave him the foundation of a great 
life. 

Now the church says at this crisis, and it 
seems to me it makes a serious mistake, " Get 
away from the world, — it is all turmoil, all 



EOW TO GET MONEY. 105 

temptation ; do not get interested in its pro- 
jects; religion is one thing, and business 
another and a very different thing. Go into 
the monastery, where these subtle voices can- 
not be heard ; go into the hermit's cell, where 
the din of business and the clink of dollar 
against dollar cannot penetrate ; get that kind 
of religion which will make a difference be- 
tween your business down town and your 
meditations on Sunday, such a difference that 
the two are strangers to each other." Non- 
sense ! and every man knows it. You cannot 
get out of the world if you would ; you can- 
not go into a monastery, and you ought not 
to if you could. That kind of life was never 
intended for you. A true life is a struggle and 
a warfare ; and you are a coward and a sneak 
unless you put your shield on your arm, and 
your sword in your hand, and fight the fight 
bravely through : you have no right to turn 
your back on the world ; and you insult the 
Almighty if you creep into a corner and call 
that religion. It is your business to stay at 



I06 sow TO GET MONEY. 

your bench, and it is your duty to feel that 
you are doing God's work every time the 
hammer goes down, and every time you add 
up a column of figures. That is the only 
religion worth having. I conjure you to be- 
lieve in no other.^ Never believe that your 
religion is one thing and your business life 
another. Unless you can interweave them 
both, unless you can so entwine them that 
they make up one solid fabric, your life is a 
dead failure. Christ came upon the earth to 
teach you to do it. Men who with brown 
hands and hard muscles work from early 
morning to late evening are just as much or- 
dained to their labor as I am ordained to 
mine. Heaven is on your side, and heavenly 
hands have been put upon your head in con- 
secration ; and you need not leave your bench, 
you need not leave your workshop, to be- 
come God's servants if you are honestly 
doing God's work every day. 

Religion to the politician is that sense of 
responsibility which compels him to make 



HOW TO GET MONEY. 



107 



laws that are just, and to create a public 
opinion that is true and pure. Religion to 
the minister is that generous spirit which 
prompts him to start noble charities on their 
way, to infuse a new impulse into all pro- 
gressive movements, to say the good word of 
cheer to the down-trodden and oppressed, 
and to criticise and denounce wrong wher- 
ever it is to be found. Religion to the man 
of business is simply business manliness. It 
teaches him to be true to himself. It teaches 
him to be honorable in all his dealings, to be 
generous, to be just. And he who is just 
and generous and true and manly for sev- 
enty years; who can take his ledger up to 
heaven, sure that the angels will find no mis- 
take there, need not fear the judgment of God. 
If your ledgers are right, then your souls 
are right. If you cheat in your business, — 
I do not care if you belong to all the churches 
in Christendom, I do not care if you pray 
prayers never so long, — you are on the road 
to hell. 



I08 HOW TO GET MONET. 

This is a simple, plain matter of fact; and 
this is a simple, common-sense view of relig- 
ion. I am not at all inclined to criticise the 
business world as most ministers do. I have 
the feeling, and I think you will sympathize 
with me in it, that the merchants in our com- 
munity are at bottom an honorable set of men. 
They are working in a field providentially filled 
with ennobling responsibilities. There are ex- 
ceptions everywhere, there are black sheep in 
every flock. But it is not fair to generalize 
from these scapegoats ; it is not fair to criticise 
and denounce business life, and business deal- 
ings, because there are dishonest men. My 
impression is that you cannot find the same 
number of men anywhere who have a higher 
tone morally, who are more just, generous, and 
strictly honest than the solid business men of 
this city. I hope I am not wrong. Immense 
sums pass every day from one hand to 
another, with only a word behind them, and 
no one legally responsible. The moral law 
and the general honor and honesty of men 



HOW TO GET MONEY. 



109 



underlie business. I think that you who are 
in middle life will say to these young men to- 
night, " Gentlemen, you can have no better 
capital to start with than a word that does 
not betray itself, — an honest intention that 
cannot be tempted out of its honesty." Above 
all things else, my young friends, above all 
things else, get manliness, and in the end you 
will win the victory. It cannot be otherwise ; 
if God is on your side, the world will come 
up and back you. In the long-run, the truth 
must win. Burn it into your heart, put it on 
your books, " In the long-run, even in such a 
changeful community as this, the truth must 
win." 

So I say to you, there is no use in praying 
on Sunday, and cheating on Monday. It 
does you no good before high heaven to own 
the best pew in the most fashionable church 
if your word is not good for any thing on the 
street. It does not help you to subscribe to 
the largest creed in Christendom. God meas- 
ures a man by his sincerity of purpose, by 



no EOW TO GET MONET. 

the inherent strength of his character, and by 
nothing else. 

And now as you are starting in life, as you 
are standing on the threshold and looking to- 
wards a brilliant future, as you are dreaming 
great dreams, which I hope will sometime be 
realized, — dreams of a home of your own, of a 
wife and children, and of all the comforts 
and luxuries of affluence, — put this thought 
into your heart, and keep it there: you are 
the servants of the Almighty; it is He that 
has put you into your place, and given you 
your work. Be faithful in your toil, and 
stand up always in the dignity of a true man- 
liness. The world is your school-room. La- 
bor with your souls as well as with your 
hands. Do not be ashamed of your work, 
but make your work your religion and your 
religion your work. Make for yourselves a 
staunch character, a character that will bear 
the test of any temptation, and believe me, 
my young friends, twenty years from now it 
will be all right with you; and forty years 



EOW TO GET MONET. m 

from now, when you lie down to sleep, if you 
can look back upon a life well spent, a life 
filled with faithful endeavor, with a high, 
manly, noble, and Christian purpose, you 
need not have any fears in closing your eyes, 
for the angels of God will come to bear you 
up to heaven. The Father's voice, as He 
looks upon your shortcomings with loving 
kindness and tender mercy, and as He re- 
members, as He promised to do, that you are 
but dust, will pronounce these words, which 
are the only coin that passes in heaven : 
" Well done, good and faithful servant, enter 
thou into the joy of thy Lord." 

Get money, get it in manly fashion, get it 
with kingly hands, and use it with a kingly 
heart. God grant you may be apt scholars 
in the primary school of this lower life ! your 
ledger one of the text-books that teach you. 
many a valuable lesson, every page inscribed 
with the invisible words Laus Deo; your 
Bible another text-book clearing up all your 
doubts, cheering your lagging spirits, putting 



112 EOW TO GET MONET. 

strength into your weak heart, filling your life 
with radiant hope of a promised future ; and 
then, when your day is over, and your work 
fully completed, may you be received, an hon- 
ored graduate, into the higher school, where 
nobler lessons still are taught, and worthier 
prizes won. 



HURRY AND WORRY. 



V. 

HUERY AKD WORRY. 

Pkoverbs xxviii. 20 : " He that maketh haste to be rich shall 
not be innocent." 

TF I were called upon to designate the hap- 
piest man in the community, I should 
neither choose him from the ranks of wealth, 
nor from those of poverty. I should look for 
him in that middle class, that laboring class, 
which is neither rich nor poor. The happiest 
man is he whose hope is for constant labor 
from youth to age, and who in constant labor 
finds health and happiness and sweet content- 
ment. These blessings are God's compensa- 
tion for the money he does not possess. A 
rich man has aches and pains. The laboring 
man has no money, but good muscles and 
nerves. Many a merchant down town would 
give three-quarters of his wealth if he could 
possess the health of the porter in his store. 



Il6 HURRY AND WORRY. 

He would give the other quarter, if he could 
begin life all over again on new, better, and 
higher principles. 

The trouble with us Americans is, that we 
spend all of our time in getting money, and 
so have no opportunity for physical or intel- 
lectual enjoyment. We give for dollars that 
which is worth more than gold. We give 
length of days in exchange for silver. We 
are willing to live out only half our time, to 
live it nervously, fretfully, and wretchedly, if 
only during those years we can shield our- 
selves from the winter storms by a four-story 
freestone front. 

In England, such is the nature of domestic 
training, boys take a singular pride in their 
bodies. They are proud of their physical 
prowess. They boast of the weights they can 
lift, of the miles they can walk or run, of the 
labors they can achieve ; and when they grow 
to be men of eighty years, they still seem to be 
tough and fibrous, and get out of every year 
of their lives a great deal of solid enjoyment. 



HURRY AND WORRY, 117 

Almost every country except our own has 
its national sports. Englishmen go day after 
day to the greensward, where they engage in 
cricket; and, through the muscular develop- 
ment which is the logical consequence of the 
sport, they carry a larger strength to the 
moral battle-field, and are better able to en- 
gage in the commercial activities that occupy 
them. In Germany the youth, as a matter 
of course, as soon as he goes into the pri- 
mary school, goes into the gymnasium. The 
teacher cares no more for the amount of 
knowledge he imparts to the child's mind, 
than he does for the boy's muscular develop- 
ment, for the way in which he stands, and 
walks, and w^orks. Boys' bodies are taken 
care of elsewhere, but here not at all. We 
have no national sports, no gala-days, no 
breathing time, only a solid, weary round of 
work year after year. We start with wonder 
when we see the agile athlete perform his 
wondrous deeds. Such things are inexplica- 
ble to us, and we even question the use of 
such strength. 



Il8 HURRY AND WORRY. 

Now, I dare to say in your presence, Christian 
friends, that a great deal of your commercial 
integrity, and very much more of your relig- 
ious principles than you think, depend upon 
the condition of your bodies. I want to say 
to these young men, in your presence, that 
the first condition of commercial honesty is a 
good, hearty, and wholesome body. He who 
has it not is morally in danger. He stands 
no chance in the world by the side of a strong 
man. The religion which goes with dyspep- 
sia is not worth having. The man who looks 
at God with a neuralgic brain does not see 
him as he is. The man whose body is all 
out of gear neither knows nor dreams of the 
glory of that victory which comes to him who 
wrestles in the match and wins ; and there is 
a whole domain of hope, of thought, of deep, 
solid faith, of practical ambition, of which he 
has no conception. 

Your business demands all the vital force 
you have to give. It makes a vast difference 
not only to you, but to those who depend on 



HURRY AND WORRY. 



119 



you, whether you succeed or fail. You must 
be far-sighted as well as quick-sighted ; and 
you must, above all, be deliberate, and know 
the probable if not the possible consequence 
of every act. If your work, like the exercise 
of a gymnast, adds to your physical and in- 
tellectual resources, and does not dim or 
blur your moral sensitiveness, you may be 
very sure that God approves of what you are 
doing, and of the way in which you are do- 
ing it. The reason why we take so little 
delight in our business is that we are in an 
uncomfortable hurry all the while. The wear 
and tear of life in such a city as this, where 
men must struggle day and night to be suc- 
cessful, is frightful to think of. No man 
moves a step without friction. He uses him- 
self up day by day. He cannot recuperate 
by breathing the fresh country air, he cannot 
enjoy a respite by sitting on the floor and 
playing with the children. It is business that 
first looks into his eyes in the morning ; it is 
business that chases him through the swift- 



I20 HURRY AND WORRY, 

flowing hours of the day; it is business which 
tells him to eat his meals as quickly as possi- 
ble, no matter what the consequences may be 
upon his body ; it is business that comes like 
a nightmare and spoils his dreams in the 
night. And so, tired and weary and worn, 
having prodigally expended the vital energy 
that should have been carefully husbanded, he 
grows old at fifty, gray-haired at fifty-five, is 
dead at sixty, and in two months is entirely 
forgotten. 

The old motto of our fathers was a whole- 
some one, " Slow and sure." They said, 
" Make your money honestly, make it little 
by little; then you know how much it is 
worth, and then you will know how to keep 
it, and how to spend it." That good old 
motto is foolishness to us; and when we 
translate it, it appears on our ledgers very 
much in this shape, for it is the only motto 
of America to-day, not " Slow and sure," but 
" Hurry up and run the risk." 

When I look out and see the business life 



HURRY AND WORRY. 1 21 

of such a community as this, I am reminded 
of the traveller in the streets of Egypt, who, 
surrounded by a dozen score of beggars, 
threw to them a handful of the small coin of 
the country. As though each fractional part 
of a cent was a diamond worth millions, they 
jostled and crowded each other, they grew 
angry, they tore each others' garments, they 
hurriedly, selfishly, and almost cruelly grasped 
all they could, and in the growing excitement 
of the moment they wronged each man his 
neighbor. 

If life is like a game of chess, you must 
play calmly, bravely, patiently, if you would 
win. But if, on the contrary, life is merely a 
grab game, in which he gets the most money 
who has the longest arm and the closest 
clutch ; if selfishness is the only impelling 
power ; and if we jostle each other and forget 
the rights of others, — then our business has 
become demoralized, it lowers the temperature 
of our religious life, it hurts us, and we and 
ours are in danger. 

6 



122 HURRY AND WORRY, 

Boys are scarcely boys at twelve years of 
age. No sooner do they reach their teens 
than they go into the street to buy and sell, 
and to dream of great things that may come 
to pass. Girls have parted with their girl- 
hood. Long before they arrive at years of 
discretion, they are planning conquests in 
social life. Their lips are all covered, as 
with snow-flakes, with polite phrases, and 
they are veneered and varnished with those 
accomplishments which fascinate and attract ; 
while there is too little that is solid, too little 
that is worth the having, too little that ac- 
cords with a noble and grand and Christian 
womanhood. 

The great hope of the American is to get 
rich, by some lucky accident, in twenty min- 
utes. He is unwilling to work for twenty 
years, and slowly accumulate by persistent 
effort year after year, until he stands on the 
top of the pinnacle. That would be a worthy 
and legitimate ambition, but it*does not satis- 
fy his greedy desire. He is more willing to 



HURRY AND WORRY, 123 

spend that twenty years in grumbling over 
his bad fortune, and trying to invent a 
plan by which at the end of that time he 
can rise in a perpendicular line so high 
that he will be out of sight of poverty in 
an instant. 

The business, it seems to me, not only of 
this city, but of all the commercial centres of 
America, is top-heavy, and that is why it is 
killing us. Immense expenses surround you 
on every hand. Society demands of you 
that you shall keep your carriage. It makes 
a further demand that you shall live in a 
splendid dwelling. Humility is not one of 
the virtues of our people. A man who is 
daring enough to live on a small salary has 
the real pith in him. He is braver than the 
soldier who exposes his body on the field of 
battle. The soldier is filled with a divine 
impulse, an impulse fiery and hot, and under 
its potent sway he rushes into the thickest of 
the fight. The man who earns only a thou- 
sand or two a year, who has a family to sup- 



124 HURRY AND WORRY, 

port, and who determines to live within his 
means, deliberately assumes a position which 
the worldly-minded laugh at, and so he finds 
himself constantly at a disadvantage. 

In order to mingle in the society to which 
you belong, you are compelled to run into all 
sorts of extravagances, — the extravagance of 
dress, of furniture, of dinner-parties. In or- 
der to get the money to meet this daily 
demand, you increase your business beyond 
its legitimate circumference; and it spreads 
out further and further, and your credit grows 
thinner and thinner, until at last it is so thin, 
that when the crash comes you are bankrupt. 
Thiere are many men in New York who do a 
dozen times too much business for their capi- 
tal ; and the consequence is, that they are liv- 
ing in a constant fear of their liabilities. 
Love for their children and their wives makes 
them too ambitious for a high and honorable 
position. 

I think you make a very serious mistake 
just here. It sometimes costs too much to 



HURRY AND WORRY. 



125 



maintain what you falsely call the dignity of 
your family. Sometimes it costs your life to 
put your sons and daughters where you think 
they belong. You hurry to your business in 
the morning, and make a venture which your 
judgment scarcely approves, thus risking all, 
hoping for good luck. If good luck comes, 
you bridge the gulf; but if not, your poor 
body is worn out, and you fret away year 
after year, while there is very little that is 
calm and serene and beautiful in your life. 
I am afraid, friends^ that this is the history of 
many New York merchants. I am afraid 
that many of you can testify to the truthful- 
ness of my statements in your own lives. 
What we need is greater quietness and seren- 
ity, then we shall have a better religious 
principle; for he who frets and hurries some- 
times sacrifices his honor, when, were he calm 
and deliberate, he would hold his honor dear 
to his heart. 

You feel this feverish influence everywhere. 
I have been in your city only two months, 



126 UURRT AND WORRY. 

and yet I feel it to such extent that I am 
already all worn out. It seems to me that 
every man is doing all he can, and a little 
more ; that he is not only living on what be- 
longs to to-day, but that he borrows a little 
from what belongs to to-morrow. I think if 
I could infuse into your lives that love of ease 
that would lead you to stand or sit still for a 
few minutes, and once in a while take a holi- 
day, go into the country, or do as many a 
good man has done before, sit down in the 
nursery and play with the children, and be a 
boy with them, your manliness would be 
more manly, and your Christianity would 
have a tougher fibre than it can possibly have 
in your present mode of life. He who lives 
in the midst of excitement all the time must 
break, but he who enjoys quiet at intervals 
can work with energy and not exhaust body 
or mind. 

Let me illustrate this terrible hurry in which 
you live. I remember that a little while ago 
I had two or three hours to spare. I started 



HURRY AND WORRY. 127 

out and wandered down Broadway to see the 
sights. I wanted to look into the shop-win- 
dows. I had nothing to do except to follow 
the bent of my inclination. So I looked into 
the first shop-window for as much as five 
minutes, hardly aware of the crowd that was 
going by. Soon I passed to the next win- 
dow ; and, while looking at the various curi- 
osities offered for sale, I began to feel the 
magnetism of the great crowd hurrying by 
me. How could I be still when everybody 
was moving ? How could I loiter when every 
one else seemed bent on a special errand? 
What right had I to be taking my ease, and 
to be lazily gazing into a shop-window, 
when all the world appeared to be a little 
late, and so were hurrying to make up for 
lost time. I seemed to myself to be out of 
place. I, too, must be busy about something. 
I felt that the unpardonable sin in New York 
is to have nothing to do, and to do it I 
could feel the pulses of these men's hearts as 
they went by me. Yes : I, too, began to feel 



128 HURRY AND WORRY, 

in a hurry. I did not stay long at the third 
window, but joined the crowd and passed on. 
The next window I merely glanced at, and 
that was all. I had got into the tide, and its 
influence was truly irresistible. I hurried 
along faster and faster, and at last just as fast 
as I possibly could. I did not know where 
T was going : I did not much care where I was 
going. All I wanted was to go somewhere, 
and to get there just as quickly as I could. 
So, panting for breath, I rushed on, and on, and 
on, until at last I found myself away down to 
the other end of your city at the ferry. I 
hurried on board the boat : in a few minutes, 
each one of which seemed an hour, the boat 
started. As we paddled across the water, I 
went to the other end of the vessel, and 
looked towards Brooklyn very much as I im- 
agine Columbus looked towards America. 
It seemed to me like the promised land. If 
I could once put my foot on Brooklyn soil, I 
should be entirely satisfied. When I got 
within a dozen rods of the pier, on the other 



EURR7 AND WORRY, 



129 



side, I did what you have done a thousand 
times, I stepped over the chain. When I got 
within ten feet of the pier, I did what ten 
thousand more do every day, I wondered how 
far I could jump. When I got within three 
feet of the pier, I did jump, at the risk of my 
life. I followed the crowd for a few rods, 
and then w^as stranded four miles from home, 
breathless, and nearly tired to death. 

Now, friends, it seems to me that my ex- 
perience is but a transcript of the daily life 
which is endured in- your city. No wonder 
that every ten or fifteen years you are com- 
pelled to look for reinforcements from the 
country. No wonder your young men grow 
thin in the face. No wonder that epidem- 
ics, unknown generations ago, appear on the 
surface of your life. You no longer boast of 
your physical powers. You are fretful and 
sickly. You spend life so rapidly, and get 
out of it so little. Why, the other day when 
I was in the business part of the city, I went 
into a sort of gymnasium. It is a good in- 
6* 



130 HURRY AND WORRY, 

stitution, and I hope many a man will go 
there and be helped. I said to the proprietor, 
" When I was a boy I went to the gymna- 
sium two hours every day, and here you have 
the result of it," showing him my muscle. 
" I can walk all day, I can ride horseback all 
day, I can work all night if necessary ; and I 
attribute it merely to the fact that when young 
my mother told me that God's blessing rested 
on a healthful body, and I had better get one 
under way the very first thing." I asked then 
what a certain lifting apparatus was for. His 
reply was significant. He said that in fifteen 
minutes with this machine you can get as 
much exercise as in two hours in the ordinary 
way. We crowd down into fifteen minutes 
what it took us two hours to get years ago. 
This is thoroughly American. Concentrated 
exercise is the latest invention. 

Almost every one is overworked. I look 
at your faces, young men, as you sit here and 
listen to me. I think I can see the lines of 
care that ought not to be there. It is hard 



HURRY AND WORRY, 131 

for me to guess your age ; and I should miss 
it nine times out of ten, because, though young 
in years, you are old in looks. The life you 
live drains your nervous system. You are 
not strong in body as you should be, and 
therefore you are not strong in soul as you 
might be. Steady, unremitting toil is the rule 
of life. 

The editor of a paper, by night and by day 
with the eyes of an eagle, looks out for every 
incident in this vast city, and feels ashamed 
unless he chronicles the very last death and 
the very last fire. It is curious to note the 
difference between London and New York in 
this respect. "When George Peabody died, 
his entire biography was published in the 
New York papers twenty-four hours before a 
word was said about him, except the mere 
announcement of his death, in the London 
papers ; and yet he died within a mile of them, 
and three thousand miles from us. The edi- 
tors of the London journals excused them- 
selves from commenting on the event, on the 



132 HURRY AND WORRY. 

ground that they had no time to write an 
obituary ; and at the very moment when they 
were offering excuses, there appeared some 
two columns in fine print, giving the entire 
history of the man from the cradle to the 
grave, in nearly every paper in this city. 
This is what Americans call enterprise. The 
model editor keeps a biography of every rep- 
resentative man in the nation pigeon-holed; 
and when any thing happens to him, all pos- 
sible information is within reach from his 
desk. Every step a public man takes is 
tracked, and all his antecedents are known 
away back to his grandfather. And this edi- 
torial life is only a type of the general life of 
the community. Everywhere you find hurry 
and bustle. You have only one motto : " It 
is the duty of every man either to keep up 
with the crowd, or else to get out of the 
way." 

Manual labor seldom hurts a man : brain 
labor kills. Let a man work never so hard 
with his body, he is apt to live to a hale, 



HURRY AND WORRY. 133 

hearty old age ; but if you compel him to work 
with his brain a longer time than nature al- 
lows, she takes revenge by inducing prema- 
ture decay, by developing diseases which sap 
his strength, and undermine his constitution. 
The consequences of all this are apparent. 
If only fathers would be boys once in a while, 
if only mothers would be girls again, the av- 
erage life of Americans would be greatly 
lengthened. If we could give up this dread- 
ful wear and tear of business, we should be 
healthier in the tone of our society, and 
stronger in mind, spirit, and body. The man 
nowadays who is doing an active business 
cannot spare time to say his prayers in the 
morning, for he must hurry down to his count- 
ing-house ; he cannot say them at night, for 
he is tired, and drops asleep with the drowsy 
words on his lips. In the olden time the morn- 
ing hour was given to asking the benediction 
of God. A full hour at noon was given to 
dinner and social converse. At even-tide the 
family met all together around the hearth- 



134 HURR Y AND WORR Y, 

stone, and sang their hymn of praise, and 
spoke of their gratitude to the Father. Men 
at eighty years of age were strong, healthy, 
hearty, and enjoyed life up to the hour of 
their death. 

To-day it is not so. We are old when we 
are young, and we die when we should be in 
our prime. 

But more than all, dear friends, the moral 
consequences of such a life are terrible. It is 
not many months since, in a neighboring city, 
a poor young man noted for his honesty, with 
a good mother, educated by a manly father, 
entered a bank. Two years passed by, and 
he kept honest, for he kept well in health. 
But the time came when overwork began to 
tell on him : he was compelled to stay at his 
desk till late at night ; he became restless and 
uneasy and nervous ; he was tired out. Then 
in order to keep up his strength he resorted 
to stimulants. He smoked all the time; he 
drank light wines, and when these failed to 
rouse him, he drank whiskey. His hand 



HURRY AND WORRY. 135 

trembled, his health gave way, and he said 
to himself, " Why must I work for others all 
the time, and end by having nothing for my- 
self?" He had no money with which to 
speculate, so he borrowed money from his 
employer ; that is, he took money from the 
safe, intending to return it and pocket the 
profits ; but profits changed to losses. Then 
he took more, and so threw good money after 
bad. So he gradually snarled himself all up, 
until his ledger was chaotic, and his employer 
found out the swindle. The young man's 
character and prospects were blasted; the 
father was brought down to the grave prema- 
turely ; the mother was bowed down with age 
and sorrow ; and a poor wife and child were 
covered with shame. 

I sought for a cause for such calamities, 
and found it. Society, because it is false- 
hearted and cruel, demanded of this young 
man that he should not live quietly on his 
two thousand a year ; and he did not have the 
courage to do his simple, plain duty. He 



136 HURRY AND WORRY. 

might have done it, if he had had a mens sana 
in corpore sano ; but he had not these things. 
The blush had faded from his cheeks through 
incessant bending over the desk. The sun- 
shine never stole into his room; he worked 
by gas-light all day. The man who works in 
a north room, and under the sidewalk, will in- 
evitably grow ill. Honesty is born of the 
sun. Give me a sunny room in which to earn 
my living, and it is my fault if I am not hon- 
est : compel me to stay in a dark room, in a 
chilly room, day after day, and month after 
month, and it is as much your fault as mine 
if the ledger account is not all right. It was 
so with this young man : when the tempta- 
tion came, fretful, nervous, oppressed in body, 
he yielded to it, and now is in the State Pris- 
on suffering the penalty of his deeds. 

A man whose digestion is good can be a 
Christian. The man who has the dyspepsia 
can commit any crime. The cause of half 
the evils in New York is to be found in weak 
nerves, poor digestion, and liver complaint. 



HURRY AND WORRY. 137 

Rapid eating and overwork result in crimi- 
nality. Teach your boys to be boys while 
they are young. Teach them to be proud of 
nothing more than of their bodies except it 
be their characters. Teach them to be strong 
in muscle, to boast of their prowess. Let 
them have no ambition to get into the whirl 
of commercial life. They will get into it 
soon enough. You must keep them back 
until they are equipped for the fight with 
healthy bodies and healthy souls. 

Gentlemen, you who are still young, there 
are two things you ought to do : the first is 
to spend as much of your time as possible in 
getting into perfect health, that first; then 
spend as much of your time as you can in 
keeping in a perfect physical condition. Boast 
all day when you get there, and stay there 
as long as you are able to. Let it be a part 
of your religion to think good health one of 
the greatest of all blessings ; never cease to 
be thankful to God for it ; then you can en- 
joy the exercise of that religious principle 



138 HURRY AND WORRY. 

which makes the soul as sturdy and healthy 
as the body. A good constitution and true 
rehgion go together. The first will enable 
you to enjoy to the full the pleasures of this 
present life, and the last will give you a deep 
and changeless faith in the future. God de- 
mands that you be true to his physical as well 
as his spiritual laws. A big muscle and a 
great soul make the ideal man. Get both, 
and keep both. 



UNDEPILED RELIGION. 



VL 

UNDEFILED EELIGIO:^. 

St. Mark x. 17 ; " Good Master, what shall I do that I may 
inherit eternal life ? " 

/^ENTLEMEN, in the previous lectures 
I have spoken to you of your possibil- 
ities and of your dangers. I come now to 
speak of your religion, of that temper and 
tone of your nature which is to bless and 
consecrate your lives. Your business is to 
your life what the fibre is to the oak. Your 
religion is what the sap is to the fibre, — that 
mysterious something which induces tough- 
ness of trunk and limb, which gives its green- 
ness to the leaf, and which fills the fruit with 
its delicious aroma. 

Religion is something very simple, and very 
easily understood. If you go to the creeds 
of Christendom, you may become bewildered: 
if you go to Jesus Christ, the path will at 



142 UNDEFILED RELIGION. 

once be made plain and clear. Obey your 
conscience, and you shall see God. Live up 
to your ideal ; be always true to your best self. 
If you do this, you need have no fear ; for God 
is with every man who desires to be with him. 
God takes up his abode in every human heart, 
and stays there until he is expelled by passion, 
by ambition, or by lust. 

No wonder that the young man of to-day, 
looking over Christendom and asking what 
is religious truth, becomes strangely bewil- 
dered. There are a thousand banners flying, 
and beneath each one the troops are zealous, 
brave, and knightly. With wondrous elo- 
quence each denomination pleads its own 
cause, but commits the fatal error within 
whose shadow infidelity and atheism are 
born, when it asserts that its system alone is 
true, and all others are false ; that it alone 
has supreme power to dictate dogma, while 
every thing unapproved by its synod is dan- 
gerous; that it alone can trace the narrow 
path betwixt the cradle and the grave, and 



UNDEFILED RELIGION. 1 43 

that all other ways lead to death and ruin. 
Young men, in your search after the true re- 
ligion, I conjure you above all things else to 
clothe yourselves with that love of man which 
is full of mercy and charity ; and when you 
have settled down upon certain convictions, 
spend so much of your time in doing good to 
your fellows that you will have no minute left 
to denounce any man, and then you will find 
the golden key that unlocks the gates, and 
leads you into the Eternal Presence. The 
fact is, and it is time you and I should see it 
and speak of it, the fact is that God does 
not exclusively reside within the limits of any 
denomination. He presides with equal be- 
nignity over them all. He is not more in 
this church than in any other church in the 
land. His word is not preached from this 
pulpit alone, nor is his spirit represented by 
the ministers of our own sect exclusively. 
God is in the midst of every people that seek 
him, and pray to him, no matter under what 
denominational banner they may be working. 



144 UN DEFILED RELIGION. 

If I understand this matter aright, these 
sectarian limitations are mere matters of con- 
venience; and if you insist on making them 
more than that, you hurt yourself and injure 
the general cause of truth. When a dozen 
men go into the prairies and buy, each 
one of them, five hundred acres, they try to 
fence their farms in : not because any one's 
piece of property is better than his neighbors, 
but because it is his. It is done only as a 
matter of convenience. 

Over the fence yonder is as rich loam as 
can be found here; his neighbor's farm is 
as good as this man's ; and the only real proof 
of the value of any of them is to be found in 
the October crops, in the golden sheaves that 
are produced. You can apply that simile, 
gentlemen, to the religions of the world. 
There is none of them that has not its use, 
that is not imbued with the true spirit, that 
is not divinely ordained to do some redeem- 
ing work in this bad world. Every church 
whose pulpit dares to speak the truth is a 



UNDEFILED RELIGION, I45 

Christian Church ; and every congregation that 
kneels in prayer, asking for help to become 
more Christ-like, is a Christian congregation. 
It makes little difference what four walls wit- 
ness your worship ; little difference upon the 
wings of what minister's words your souls 
are lifted up to heaven ; little difference under 
the influence of what church's music you are 
subdued to reverence. It is not the organ 
which makes Christianity, nor yet is it the 
church that is to save you. It is not church, 
it is not pulpit ; it is spirit : it is not form 
and ceremony ; it is life, it is love, that reaches 
up to the throne eternal, and sympathy that 
reaches out to the limits of human kind. 
These things alone buy the right to be bless- 
edly immortal. 

I know you will bear with me if I illustrate 
this thought. The Roman Catholic Church 
is one which claims very little sympathy from 
me personally. I care nothing for its pomp, 
its pageantry, its emblazonry. These things 
have no influence on me at all : they are only 



146 UNDEFILED RELIGION. 

obstacles in the way of worship. I had rather 
sit on a plain pine bench in the humblest 
church that was ever built, without an organ, 
and without the silken gown of the priest, 
and pray my prayer to God. But am I so 
narrow of heart and mind that I fail to see 
the work which that great church has been 
doing, is doing now, and is destined to do in 
the civilization of mankind? Am I so un- 
lettered or so prejudiced that I fail to ac- 
knowledge its mission and its power ? It is 
the great picture-book of religion. It is the 
primer in religious education. It is the pri- 
mary school into which the infant race goes, 
and out of which it ought to graduate. 

It does not trouble me that some clergymen 
wear a white gown in one part of the service, 
and a black gown in another. If they think 
it right to do so, in God's name let them do 
it. It is all foolishness to me, but it may be 
the way of wisdom for them ; and if you are 
helped in your worship of God by the spec- 
tacle, use the help at every opportunity. Go 



UNDEFILED RELIGION. ^ 147 

wherever you are lifted highest toward heaven. 
Go wherever the words of the preacher carry 
you out of yourself, and lead you towards a 
nobler manhood, and a purer and truer pur- 
pose. 

Then again, we see in our midst that 
magnificent organization which we call the 
Methodist Church. It is so democratic and 
unambitious that it has wandered among the 
poor of this country for a hundred years, 
and scattered blessings everywhere. It wears 
the laurel wreath, not because it seeks the 
respect of the wealthy and the aristocratic; 
for it does not care to meet the arguments of 
the sceptic with rebutting logic. Content 
with the simple Gospels themselves, it bears 
them from hamlet to hamlet, from home to 
home, consecrating every acre of ground on 
this broad continent by its noble and self- 
sacrificing spirit. 

Then again, we see standing by the side 
of Methodism what we call Orthodoxy. Its 
influence is felt in every part of the commu- 



148 UN DEFILED RELIGION. 

nity. Its pulpits seem to be founded on a 
rock taken fron:i the top of Mount Sinai. It 
is Mosaic in its power. It is hardly yet filled 
with the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount, 
for it has not yet finished with the Decalogue. 
It says to mankind, in tones that make you 
shiver. Thou shalt not, for I am a jealous 
God : obey, and you shall be rewarded with 
bliss ; disobey, and you shall be punished in 
the fires of hell ! and with thrilling eloquence 
it holds the poor trembling sinner over the 
pit, until at last, frightened out of his bad- 
ness, he tries to be good. 

Now, friends, although this church deals so 
largely in the penalties that attach to sin; 
though it looks persistently at the penal side 
of God's government, — cannot you and I see 
that it is doing infinite service in the cause 
of Christ ? Are there not men in this com- 
munity, — in every community, — who cannot 
be attracted by love, who cannot see any 
beauty in the ideal, who are wilful enough 
to follow their own lusts and passions, no 



UN DEFILED RELIGION. 1 49 

matter what the hazard may be ? Christ may 
beckon to such men with his loving hand, but 
they turn their backs on him. Moses must 
come with his thunder of threatenings, and 
then they will shiver and shake, and, perhaps, 
hesitate in their mad career. 

Then, finally, we see our own church, — 
the Unitarian and Universalist Church. It 
teaches us to love God because he first loved 
us. It tries to show to all that the way to be 
noble and courageous is to live with one's 
head pillowed on Ihe bosom of infinite love. 
It asserts that God is never, under any possi- 
ble circumstances, other than a father ; that 
even when we commit the vilest sins, he does 
not hate us, but rather grieves for us ; and that 
when we make our bed in the hell of guilt, 
he visits us and sends his ministering spirits 
to lift us up. 

Now all those churches stand side by side. 
Each one grows eloquent over its claims 
upon you ; but, believe me, they are all equally 
needed in our civilization. Each one has its 



150 UNDEFILED RELIGION, 

place; each one has its work; each one is do- 
ing great good. So long as men are different 
in education, in complexion, in temperament; 
so long as they are different in the circum- 
stances attending their birth, — so long will 
there be differences in the administration of 
religion. It is every man's bounden duty, in 
presence of these facts, — a duty he owes to 
God, to the community, and to himself, — to 
find out what church he agrees with most 
nearly, and then to worship at its altar. And 
let him be sure to exercise charity towards 
all, and to have in his heart malice toward 
none. 

Now, I want to speak to you of certain un- 
derlying principles, which are at the founda- 
tion of all religious systems. I want to call 
to your attention certain thoughts which are 
fundamental, which are the basis of every no- 
ble character. 

First of all, if you are to be good men and 
true, I want you to feel a constant depend- 
ence upon, and a constant responsibility to, 



UNDEFILED RELIGION. 



151 



God. If this is in your hearts, you will at 
once be brave and manly. If there is One in 
heaven who watches over you, and cares 
enough for you to listen to your prayers and 
longings, it is your duty to so use the talents 
he has put into your charge that you can ren- 
der an account to him, in the last day, of 
which you need not be ashamed. Walk ever 
with the sublime and majestic step of a king. 
You are every thing to God, and he should 
be every thing to you. To be religious is 
simply to put his„ Spirit into your daily life, 
to live in constant communion with him, to 
feel that he is very near to you, and never 
far away. God and you are together in every 
day's toil, and he expects you to do your 
share of the work. 

When you build a ship, you do not think 
your work quite complete when the strong 
oaken timbers are knitted together, nor when 
the tall masts point to the stars, nor when the 
white sails are spread to the breeze, nor when 
the rich cargo is taken on board. There is 



152 UNDEFILED RELIGION. 

something else needed : it is the ton after ton 
of heavy iron that must nestle down close to 
the keel. It is, after all, the ballast that in- 
sures the success of the voyage. If this is in 
its place, you may be sure of reaching the 
port for which you are steering. When you 
are in mid-ocean, no matter how the winds 
may howl, no matter how high the terrible 
waves may throw their white caps, the weight 
that is down yonder will be strong enough to 
draw the masts up by slow degrees until they 
point heavenward again. It is the weight 
that is down below that enables you to suc- 
cessfully brave the storm. Just so in human 
life. A man needs more than education, more 
than genius, more than social position, more 
than a successful business. He must have, 
nestling in the very centre and core of his 
heart, the divine weight of religious principle. 
He must be ballasted with a sense of vast 
responsibility ; and then when his money fades 
away, when he drops from his social eleva- 
tion, when misfortune dogs every step and 



UN DEFILED RELIGION, 153 

entraps him at last, when wife and child, father 
and mother, all go into the darkness of the 
shadow, though he have nothing else left, he 
will have confidence in God, and that will bear 
him through. 

Why, friends, what is called good fortune 
is the most dangerous thing that can come to 
a man. Many a one is born into a new life 
by being thrown from the pinnacle of wealth 
to the depths of poverty. God as truly teaches 
you when he makes you look at life through 
your tears, as when he fills your hands with 
plenty, and wreathes your lips with smiles. 
Many and many a man, after twenty years of 
toil, stands on his half-million, and looks 
proudly at the position he has made for him- 
self. He has given his brain, his muscle, his 
time, and his character to the acquisition of a 
fortune ; and at last he has won it. But, per- 
chance, — how often is this the case ! — he has 
forgotten to lay up treasures in heaven. All his 
money is in the savings-bank, or in United- 
States bonds ; hardly a dollar in the bank of 
7* 



154 UN DEFILED RELIGION. 

God. He is not dishonest, not wilfully bad : 
he has simply ignored religion, or thought of it 
only as the necessity of old age. So long as 
he has half a million of money, and can buy 
the gratification of every appetite and desire, 
he will never learn what a truly religious life 
is, and never know the happiness that comes 
from trust in God. In one fell, dreadful mo- 
ment, — it may be a panic in the market, a fall 
in stocks, no matter what, — the whole is swept 
away, and he stands impoverished and alone. 
He is poor again, but not with the world 
before him as in his youth. The world is now 
all behind him, and he has nothing before him 
except the certainty of old age and death. 
To the casual observer, a great calamity has 
befallen him. Fortune has been not only 
fickle, but even cruel ; and at first he is inclined 
to believe that God has either been very un- 
kind, or else has neglected him altogether. 
He sits pondering the problem : he sees what 
his life has been, and what it might have been. 
He sees how, like a hound on the track of a 



UNDEFILED RELIGION, 1 55 

hare, he has pursued money, and forgotten the 
better things which money cannot buy: so 
little by little he creeps up closer and closer 
and closer to God, until he finds that he has 
paid just half a million dollars for a strong 
religious faith, and feels that he has bought it 
very cheaply indeed. 

I have seen this great change come in the 
fair maiden's life too. To-day she is a sim- 
ple child, and in the giddiness of her youth 
she is clothed with romance ; she is building 
air-castles; she chafes at parental restraint, 
and finds the plain every-day duties of life 
very irksome ; she delights in gay society, the 
merry dance, the chatter of her many admir- 
ers : she will never ripen into the better type 
of womanhood so long as she lives on her 
present plane. Too much good fortune attends 
her: she needs discipline, — a discipline which 
her father's money cannot buy, which only 
God can send. Sometime she goes to her 
home, and when she steps within the door, 
she feels an oppressiveness in the very 



156 UN DEFILED RELIGION. 

atmosphere of the house. The mother who 
bore her, and who has gratified her every wish 
and whim ; the mother who has put herself 
between all danger and her child, who has 
been her sunlight and her heat, her teacher 
and her faith ; who has stood, as some moth- 
ers do, in the place of God, — that mother is 
stricken down by a fatal disease. Her eyes 
are languid, and her body is weak. The child 
watches by her bedside day after day and 
night after night. It is a hard lesson she is 
learning : she is bewildered ; the change shocks 
her, and benumbs and paralyzes her for a while. 
The darkness increases until the light goes 
out from the mother's eyes, until the life goes 
out from the mother's body, and until that 
mother's heart is still. The poor girl walks 
with faltering step to the grave, and seems to 
leave every thing there. That resting-place 
holds all that is dear to her, — not only her 
mother, but also all the light of her own life. 
With drooping head she goes back to the 
shadow of her home, and soon her spirit rises, 



UNDEFILED RELIGION. 



^57 



widens, deepens, to meet the new auties. 
She learns how to be a better sister to the 
boy, a better daughter to the father, a better 
child of the heavenly mother. She has 
grown into a truer womanhood, and has 
ripened with a delicious aroma, and her life is 
made more solemn and more rich by her great 
grief. She has learned from standing on the 
green wet sod what she could not have learned 
in sunlight and in joy. 

So it is with you and me, brothers : God's 
providence sometimes uses us roughly, and 
his voice sounds harshly in our ears ; but his 
great heart loves us all the while. Your 
griefs and misfortunes are only the school 
in which you learn, through tears and toil, 
to solve the deepest problems of life and char- 
acter. 

I want you, then, to feel, first of all, a 
deep sense of personal responsibility; for it 
makes a great deal of difference to God what 
you do and what you say. You seem to 
yourself to be insignificant, and small in your 



158 ^UN DEFILED RELIGION. 

influence ; you are only one in a thousand mil- 
lion, and you cannot count for much ; your 
weight adds nothing to, and detracts nothing 
from, the immense bulk of the world. These 
are your thoughts ; but, believe me, with God's 
providence the minutest influence has its 
place and its mission. It is the thousand 
little fibres, each one as slender as the spider's 
attenuated thread, which, properly twisted, 
make the rope, that cannot be broken ; and it 
is your seemingly worthless life, which, right- 
ly lived, makes the whole world glorious and 
majestic. 

I do not care to what denomination you 
belong: you must acknowledge that this 
truth is at the foundation of every true char- 
acter. 

Now, in the second place, young men, I 
want to speak to you of the motives which 
should urge you in the work you have to do. 
You have doubtless learned that it is no easy 
task to be true,. true to the world and to God; 
and the impulse to this hard work comes from 



UNDEFILED RELIGION. 1 59 

the right solution of this problem, — What is 
the attitude you occupy towards your Father, 
and what is his relation to you ? I say this is a 
question of great moment ; for a man uncon- 
sciously puts the spirit of his ideas of God 
into his life. If yaur Deity is a despot, you 
inevitably become despotic yourself; if, on the 
other hand, you feel that you can go to him 
in your trouble, and that he will listen to your 
petition ; in a word, if you believe that he 
cares for you with tender love, — you will soon 
learn to hear your jieighbor's cry of suffering, 
and you will care for him generously and 
kindly. This is the law of the religious .life. 
What, then, should be your motive, brothers ? 
What but gratitude and love can be your mo- 
tive ? Surely, nothing else. Let no fear throw 
its shadow upon the relationship between you 
and your Father. Never dread him : always 
love him. Never fear because he is omnipo- 
tent ; but always draw nigh to him because he 
is gentle, kind, and good. Can I say any 
better word to you than that ? Is it not full 



l6o UNDEFILED RELIGION. 

of the very essence of true religion ? Is there 
any religion except the religion of love ? Can 
you ever get to heaven unless you are conse- 
crated by love ? I believe that filial confi- 
dence and trust constitute the only path that 
leads to happiness, the only path that leads to 
God ! See how love acts on the world. Years 
ago the overseer on the southern plantation 
drove his slaves to the field in the morning, 
and drove them back again at night. They 
labored all day with the whip held over their 
bare black backs ; and what was the result ? 
Neither had any confidence in the other ; 
neither had any kindly feeling towards the 
other. Their relation to each other was none 
other than that which would naturally exist 
between fear on the one hand, and a cruel 
desire for gain on the other. The result was 
as little work as the slaves could possibly do. 
Their feet moved slowly, and they shirked their 
duty. They felt that the overseer was fair 
game : and so whenever they could steal what 
belonged to him, their consciences excused 



UN DEFILED RELIGION. l6t 

the act ; and if they could gain by lying, they 
did it without a blush. But when the Proc- 
lamation of Emancipation struck the chains 
from off their limbs, a new life came in upon 
their souls. They became cheerful and happy ; 
they bought acres of their own, and worked 
with a right hearty will. They rose early, and 
toiled until evening ; and somehow there was 
a new spring in their steps, a new joy in their 
hearts, and a new light in their lives. 

Fathers and mothers, you will recognize 
this truth in the education of your children. 
You see it illustrated every day. The prime 
object you have in view is to teach your child 
not to distrust you, but always to fly to your 
arms in times of trouble and perplexity ; always 
to feel that, though friendships fail, your love 
will never fail. Your home is a fortress ; and 
the boy or girl makes a sortie from it into the 
world; and, if unsuccessful, he retreats behind 
the walls of your love, and feels secure. If 
this is so, your home is a happy one : if it is not 
so, your home is a wretched one. If it is so, 



l62 UNDEFILED RELIGION, 

your motherly prayers will linger like benedic- 
tions about your boy's after-life : if it is not 
so, when you die and are buried, the memory 
of you shall fade away and be lost. 

Does your child fear you ? then you are no 
mother in the sight of God. If your child 
trembles in your presence, and fears to tell you 
its thoughts, you are no true father. When 
love binds you all together, what a home is 
that, so like heaven is it ! Like a bundle of 
branches which are bound into the fagot, the 
love of each makes all stronger ; and all pour 
their strength into each. 

I would have you, young men, apply this 
truth to your religion. God is Father, you 
are child. This is no myth, no figure of 
speech. Do not fear him; never tremble in 
his presence : but go to him under all circum- 
stances. I do not care how you are living ; 
you may be a victim of your own lusts 
and passions ; you may be surrounded by all 
bad influences ; you may be even a criminal, a 
murderer, — it makes no difference. The world, 



UN DEFILED RELIGION. 1 63 

when it learns of your guilt, will turn its back 
upon you ; the world is false, and has been 
ever since Adam. The world, when it learns 
of your crime, will point its finger of scorn at 
you ; and, it may be, even noble and Christian 
men will leave you to your fate, and never 
give you a sigh at parting. The world is 
cold and uncharitable, and has been ever since 
it began. 'Christ came and died to tell you 
that there is One above you who always 
regards your wishes, and listens to your 
hopes ; and, if you are a sinner, pities you 
and grieves for you, and weeps over you. 
God in heaven, friends, so my religion teaches 
me, weeps over the sinner as the shepherd 
weeps when the poor lamb has been entrapped 
by a pitfall, and has broken its limb. God. 
the Creator, the Father, — marvellous truth ! — 
grieves for you, and is ready to move heaven, 
earth, and hell to save you. Though friend- 
ships are false, though love turns sour, though 
the door of home is shut and bolted against 
you, God's heart beats warm for you ; and his 



164 JIN DEFILED RELIGION, 

arms are open, when, like the prodigal, you try 
to seek his dear presence. 

Am I not right when I say that love to- 
wards him, perfect confidence in his love 
for you, is the noblest motive to action ? 
Never fear, never fear, never fear ; but go 
to him, sure of finding him ready to listen, 
ready to help, and even more ready to forgive. 
In all your troubles go to him, for* he has the 
only balm of Gilead for such wounds as sin 
makes in the human heart. 

Now, brothers, I do not care to what relig- 
ious sect you belong, you must admit that my 
words are true. You must confess that this 
idea of God's relation to our souls is the foun- 
dation of all Christian character, and is the 
fountain whence flows all the heroism of 
humanity. 

One more thought, and I have done. 
Brothers, there will come to you, sometime in 
your career, a great shadow, a loss, a disap- 
pointment. We do not walk always in sun- 
ny places. Life is made up of sadness and 



UN DEFILED RELIGION, 1 65 

tears, as well as joys. Not always will your 
happy dreams come true. Not always will 
your work succeed. To-day Fortune may favor 
you, to-morrow sh« may frown on you. To- 
day every thing eventuates just as you ex- 
pected ; to-morrow every thing may seem to 
lie at cross purposes. Sometime, your friend, 
on whom you have leaned, may treacherously 
step aside, and you shall fall. Sometimes your 
best endeavors will be as weak as a child's 
efforts. Sometimes a great grief will come 
like a leaden weight, and crush you down to 
earth. This is the fortune of human life. 
You cannot avoid it. It has been the com- 
mon lot of humanity from the first, and will 
be to the end. Look the fact in the face, and 
ask what it means : settle that question aright, 
and you are safe. You cannot ignore what 
is called bad luck because you are young and 
strong. It is pretty sure to dog your steps, 
and catch you sometime in your life. I care 
not how strong you are, or how nimble of 
foot you may be, sorrows are persistent, and 



1 66 UN DEFILED RELIGION. 

always catch a man before he dies. I am not 
wrong in predicting, that within the next 
twenty years your eyes shall be filled with 
burning tears, and your heart shall be filled to 
bursting with bitter grief. 

What does it all mean ? 

I would have you feel that God's providence 
is always over you, under you, around you, 
and in your life. This is the most important 
revelation of the Christian religion. This it 
is which fills the Lord's Prayer brimful of 
meaning. O my brother! I wish I could 
make you feel that all the events of life are 
controlled by a higher power. You are no 
accident, and your life has in it no accident. 
That you are in this world, breathing God's 
air and eating his food, proves that you are a 
part of his plan, that he is regarding you con- 
stantly. No matter how limited the sphere 
in which you think and act, it is all the same 
with him. If you are on a throne, God needs 
you ; and if you live in a hut and on a crust, 
God needs you none the less. He does not 



UNDEFILED RELIGION, l6*J 

care for the wealthy alone. He governs and 
guides the slenderest stream of human life. 
No class monopolizes his providence. It is 
over the carpenter and the prince, the clerk 
and the millionnaire. Every thing that comes 
to you comes with his knowledge, and because 
he thinks it best. Put that thought into your 
hearts, and then learn to trust him. Put that 
thought into your lives, and then your hand 
will instinctively grasp the Invisible Hand, and 
your lips will say, O Lord ! lead me whitherso- 
ever thou wilt. 

It is said, that in Switzerland, where so 
many of our watches are made, the workman 
in this cottage makes one kind of a wheel, 
while in that cottage another wheel is made ; 
in another, the delicate spring ; in another, the 
hands of the watch ; and in another, the case : 
and so the whole work is distributed over the 
district, each man doing what he can do best. 
Then, when the right time comes, all these 
little cottages yield up the fruit of their labor 
to the employer. With skilled fingers he puts 



1 68 UN DEFILED RELIGION, 

these springs and wheels together ; and if each 
man has done his work well, the watch will 
keep pace exactly with the sun. But if the 
smallest cog-wheel has been bunglingly or 
unfaithfully made, if the spring has been bad- 
ly tempered, the watch is spoiled. In God's 
universe, I think it is so too. You have some 
little work to do, and so have I. It may be 
that the manufacture of the smallest wheel 
in the watch has been intrusted to your care ; 
it makes no difference whether our charge is 
exalted or humble. God demands of us that 
our work shall be faithfully and properly and 
skilfully done. If it is, the universe is com- 
plete and God is glad ; but if it is not, the 
universe is incomplete, and there is sorrow in 
healven. So great a responsibility rests on 
you ; of such importance is what you think 
and do ! 

Now, friends, God leads you always. Some- 
times he leads you into the darkness, and 
talks to you there, as he never talks in the 
broad sunlight; sometimes he leads you into 



UNDEFILED RELIGION. 169 

poverty, and tells you what you find it very 
hard to believe, that it is better for you than 
riches; sometimes he leads you to the edge 
of a grave. Go with hesitating and faltering 
steps, but go trustingly, in your heart believ- 
ing that all things which he does are done for 
your good ; and then in all your life you shall 
be filled with the divine consciousness of his 
sacred and protecting presence. Fathers, 
mothers, children, over all our homes and 
over all our lives, such is the beauty of the 
Christian revelation of religion, there is spread 
the eternal and never slumbering care of Him 
who is our Father in heaven. 

Now, young men, those are my three 
thoughts. They lie at the very foundation of 
human character. Without them you can 
accomplish nothing ; but with them what pos- 
sibilities are beckoning you on ! 

THE END. 



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